Division 


<;o„  .  J0H49 


f 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/jewsinamerica00hend_0 


THE  JEWS  IN 
AMERICA 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THE  KHAZARS 

This  map,  reproduced  from  The  Jewish  Encyclopedia , 
shows  the  distribution  of  religions  in  Europe  in  the 
tenth  century.  It  indicates  that  there  was  only  one 
great  compact  mass  of  Jews  and  that  these  were  the 
Khazars,  a  Turkish  or  Mongolian  people,  who  were 
Jews  only  in  religion.  These  form  the  nucleus  of  the 
Polish  or  Eastern  Jews  of  to-day,  who  have  emigrated 
to  the  United  States  in  such  great  numbers. 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  I923,,  BY 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED,  INCLUDING  THAT  OF  TRANSLATION 
INTO  FOREIGN  LANGUAGES,  INCLUDING  THE  SCANDINAVIAN 

PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 
AT 

THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS,  GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 


First  Edition 


PREFATORY  NOTE 


These  pages  make  no  pretense  to  being  a 
complete  discussion  of  a  very  large  subject. 
They  do  present  several  novel  points,  however, 
of  the  utmost  interest  and  importance  in  any 
consideration  of  the  Jewish  question.  They 
attracted  wide  attention  when  published  in 
the  World’s  Work,  and  are  issued  in  book 
form  in  compliance  with  a  great  public  de¬ 
mand. 

The  term  “Polish  Jew/’  used  inclusively, 
has  caused  some  misapprehension.  As  ex¬ 
plained  in  the  text,  the  great  mass  of  Jews  con¬ 
centrated  in  Poland  in  the  Middle  Ages.  On 
the  partition  of  Poland  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen¬ 
tury,  the  Polish  provinces  in  which  these  Jews 
had  lived  for  centuries  became  parts  of  Rus¬ 
sia,  Austria,  and  Prussia.  The  vast  majority 
of  so-called  Russian  Jews  are  therefore  more 

properly  described  as  Polish  Jews,  and  the 
latter  term,  as  used  in  this  book,  is  intended 
to  include  them,  as  well  as  their  co-religionists 
in  Poland  itself  and  in  Austria.  “Eastern 
Jew”  is  another  expression  that  is  used  inter¬ 
changeably  with  “Polish  Jew.” 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  How  They  Came  to  This  Country  i 

II.  Do  the  Jews  Dominate  American 

Finance? . 44 

III.  The  “Menace”  of  the  Polish  Jew  92 

IV.  Radicalism  Among  the  Polish 

Jews . 134 


THE  JEWS  IN 
AMERICA 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 


CHAPTER  I 

HOW  THEY  CAME  TO  THIS  COUNTRY 

I 


HE  wave  of  anti-Semitism,  which  has 


X  been  sweeping  over  the  world  since  the 
ending  of  the  Great  War,  has  apparently 
reached  the  United  States.  An  antagonism 
which  Americans  had  believed  was  peculiarly 
European  is  gaining  a  disquieting  foothold  in 
this  country.  The  one  prejudice  which  would 
seem  to  have  no  decent  cause  for  existence  in 
the  free  air  of  America  is  one  that  is  based 
upon  race  and  religion.  Yet  the  most  conserv¬ 
ative  American  universities  are  openly  setting 
up  bars  against  the  unlimited  admittance  of 
Jewish  students;  the  most  desirable  clubs  are 
becoming  more  rigid  in  their  inhospitable  atti¬ 
tude  toward  Jewish  members;  a  weekly  news¬ 
paper,  financed  by  one  of  the  richest  men  in 


2 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

America,  has  filled  its  pages  for  three  years 
with  a  virulent  campaign  against  this  element 
in  our  population;  secret  organizations  have 
been  established  for  the  purpose  of  “fighting” 
the  so-called  “Jewish  predominance”  in 
American  life;  Congress  has  passed  and  the 
President  has  signed  an  immigration  law 
chiefly  intended — it  is  just  as  well  to  be  frank 
about  the  matter — to  restrict  the  entrance  of 
Jews  from  eastern  Europe.  It  is  an  impres¬ 
sive  fact  that  these  manifestations  of  a  less 
cordial  attitude  toward  the  Jews  find  their 
counterpart  in  another  country  which,  in 
modern  times,  has  been  friendly  to  them — that 
is,  England  itself.  That  anti-Semitism  should 
prevail  in  Russia,  Germany,  France,  indeed  in 
the  whole  continent  of  Europe,  is  not  surpris¬ 
ing;  but  its  development  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
countries  is  something  entirely  new.  Yet  such 
conservative  organs  as  the  London  Morning 
Post  and  the  London  Spectator  are  picturing 
the  activities  of  English  Jews  as  one  of  the 
most  disrupting  and  dangerous  influences  in 
British  life. 

In  the  long  tragedy  of  Israel  there  is  no 
misfortune  quite  so  deplorable  as  the  increas¬ 
ing  unfriendliness  in  the  great  liberty-loving 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  3 

Anglo-Saxon  democracies.  For  two  thousand 
years  hatred  and  persecution  have  been  its 
portion.  This  hostility  has  usually  been  ex¬ 
plained  as  one  of  the  natural  consequences  of 
that  ignorance,  religious  bigotry,  and  racial 
consciousness  which  chained  the  mind  and 
conscience  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages; 
that  it  would  disappear  with  the  general  diffu¬ 
sion  of  intelligence  and  the  growth  of  free 
democratic  institutions  has  been  taken  for 
granted.  But  Great  Britain  and  America  are 
the  most  liberal  countries  in  the  world;  the 
United  States  especially  stands  for  a  free 
chance  for  every  individual,  irrespective  of 
his  racial  origin  or  his  religious  faith.  Cer¬ 
tainly  here  is  a  development  that  calls  for  ex¬ 
planation. 

What  are  the  facts  about  our  Jewish  popu¬ 
lation?  What  part  do  they  play  in  American 
life?  Is  it  true  that  they  dominate  American 
finance,  American  industry — that  they  hold 
the  purse  strings  of  the  United  States  in  their 
hands?  Are  they  the  brains  of  the  Nation  in 
the  professions,  in  education,  in  journalism,  in 
literature,  in  music,  in  the  drama?  Are  they 
increasing  every  day  their  influence  in  politics 
and  attaining  a  disproportionate  share  of  the 


4  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

public  offices?  How  many  Jews  are  there  in 
this  country?  Where  did  they  come  from? 
Why  did  they  come  here?  Above  all,  is  it 
true,  as  is  so  commonly  charged,  that  the  Jews 
constitute  an  utterly  unassimilable  element  in 
our  population,  that  they  can  never  become 
Americans,  never  think  like  Americans,  that 
in  this  country,  as  elsewhere,  they  form  a  kind 
of  Gulf  Stream  in  the  great  ocean  of  humanity 
— that  they  are  part  of  the  general  mass  and 
yet  entirely  distinct  from  it?  These  are  only 
a  few  of  the  questions  that  must  be  answered 
before  the  fundamentals  of  the  problem  can 
be  understood. 

There  are  no  official  figures  as  to  the  num¬ 
ber  of  Jews  in  the  United  States,  for  the  Jews 
themselves  have  strenuously — and  successfully 
— opposed  any  attempt  to  enumerate  them; 
this  is  the  reason  that  the  United  States 
Census  does  not  enroll  our  people  according 
to  religion,  but  according  to  nationality.  Our 
great  Jewish  population  therefore  appears  in 
the  documents  of  the  Census  Office  as  “Rus¬ 
sian,”  “Austro-Hungarian,”  “German,”  and 
the  like.  But  the  highest  Jewish  authority, 
the  Communal  Register,  estimates — on  ap- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  5 

parently  excellent  grounds — the  Jewish  pop¬ 
ulation  of  New  York  City  at  1,500,000;  and 
numerous  statisticians  who  have  exhaustively 
studied  the  subject  figure  that  the  Jewish  pop¬ 
ulation  of  the  United  States  ranges  from 
2,500,000  to  3,000,000.  An  error  constantly 
made  is  that  of  regarding  this  Jewish  popula¬ 
tion  as  homogeneous;  the  fact  is  that  it  is 
composed  of  several  elements;  a  point  not 
commonly  grasped  is  that  certain  types  of 
Jews  differ  from  each  other  almost  as  much  as 
the  Jews  themselves  differ  from  Gentiles. 
Unless  this  truth  is  completely  understood  the 
real  nature  of  the  so-called  Jewish  “problem” 
will  not  be  comprehended.  It  is  only  until  a 
comparatively  recent  time  that  America  has 
had  anything  in  the  nature  of  a  Jewish  “prob¬ 
lem”;  this  is  not  only  because  the  Jewish  im¬ 
migration  has  increased  so  enormously  in 
twenty  years;  the  explanation  that  goes  much 
deeper  is  the  fact  that  the  Jewish  influx  from 
eastern  Europe  comprises  a  type  of  Jew  very 
different  from  that  which  had  previously  been 
a  more  or  less  familiar  figure  in  American 
life. 

No  descendant  of  the  Mayflower  is  prouder 
of  his  American  origin  than  the  Jew  whose 


6  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ancestors  have  lived  in  this  country  for  two  or 
three  generations.  It  is  impossible  to  say  an 
unkinder  thing  to  such  an  American  aristocrat 
than  to  confuse  him  indiscriminately  with  the 
recent  arrivals  from  Poland  and  Russia.  The 
basic  fact  in  the  Jewish  question  is  that  Jewish 
immigration  divides  into  three  important 
classes. 

Perhaps  many'Americans.who  regard  them¬ 
selves  as  “native  stock,”  whose  ancestors 
fought  in  the  Colonial  Wars  and  in  the  Revo¬ 
lution,  may  be  surprised  to  learn  that  there  is 
a  Jewish  element  in  the  American  population 
with  a  pedigree  as  long  as  their  own.  The 
first  shipload  of  Jews  to  reach  the  soil  which 
is  now  the  United  States  landed  in  New  York 
City  when  that  little  community  was  a  Dutch 
settlement  known  as  New  Amsterdam.  These 
early  American  Jews,  like  most  representatives 
of  their  race  who  have  since  sought  America, 
were  refugees  from  persecution;  in  this  case 
the  object  of  their  flight  was  the  Spanish  In¬ 
quisition,  which,  in  the  Seventeenth  Century, 
was  a  flourishing  institution  in  Spanish  Amer¬ 
ica.  These  exiles  belonged  to  that  branch  of 
their  people  which  had  for  centuries  been  re¬ 
garded  as  the  aristocracy  of  Israel;  they  were 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  7 

the  type  described  as  the  Sephardim — the 
name  by  which  the  Jews  of  Spain  and  Portu¬ 
gal  had  been  long  known.  This  Sephardic 
Jew  was  such  a  different  person,  physically 
and  intellectually,  from  the  more  familiar 
Northern  Jew  that  certain  authorities  have 
regarded  him  as  belonging  to  an  entirely  sep¬ 
arate  race,  a  race  which  has  nothing  in  com¬ 
mon  with  the  sons  of  Israel  except  the 
Jewish  religion.  His  origin  goes  far  back 
into  antiquity.  He  was  living  in  Spain  in 
the  days  of  Julius  Caesar;  certain  historians 
have  attempted  to  identify  him  with  the 
Phoenicians,  who  were  early  colonizers  in 
Spain — they  founded  the  city  of  Cadiz — and 
were  unquestionably  a  Semitic  race.  These 
derivations  are  probably  fantastic,  but  the 
fact  remains  that  the  Spanish  Jew  had  lived 
long  enough  in  Spain  to  take  on  at  least  one 
Spanish  characteristic,  and  that  was  an  intense 
and  haughty  pride.  He  has  always  regarded 
himself  as  a  being  infinitely  superior  to  the 
other  members  of  the  scattered  hosts  of  Israel, 
and  this  superiority  his  co-religionists  have 
generally  acknowledged.  Physically  the 
Spanish  Jew,  and  especially  the  Spanish  Jew¬ 
ess,  had  decided  claims  to  distinction.  This 


8  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

was  the  type  of  Jew  that  Rembrandt  liked 
especially  to  paint;  his  well-known  “Jewish 
Doctor,”  with  his  thin,  intellectual  features, 
his  black  silken  beard,  his  piercing  black  eyes, 
his  straight — entirely  un-“Jewish”  nose — per¬ 
haps  represents  the  Spanish  Jew  at  his  best. 
Possibly  the  Spanish  haughtiness  is  a  legiti¬ 
mate  inheritance,  for  in  Spain,  during  the 
Middle  Ages,  there  was  a  constant  mingling 
of  Jewish  and  Gentile  blood.  There  are  those 
who  explain  the  languorous  beauty  of  the 
Spanish  woman  of  to-day  on  this  ground;  her 
dark  and  dreamy  eyes,  her  olive  skin  and  her 
graceful  body,  are  really,  according  to  this 
theory,  Oriental  traits  which  she  has  derived 
from  her  remote  Jewish  ancestors.  Whatever 
basis  there  may  be  for  this  idea,  there  is  un¬ 
questionably  a  delicacy  in  the  features  of  the 
Sephardim,  men  and  women,  which  most  ob¬ 
servers  would  regard  as  decidedly  non-Jewish ; 
not  theirs  the  thick  lips,  the  curly  hair,  the 
swarthy  complexion,  the  hooked  nose,  or  the 
round  heads,  which  are  generally  accepted  as 
Jewish  characteristics.  Neither  do  they  mani¬ 
fest  certain  traits  of  behaviour  which  a  not 
too  friendly  eye  sometimes  stigmatizes  as 
“Jewish.”  In  manner,  the  Spanish  Jew  is 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  9 

neither  servile  nor  bumptious;  in  fact,  his  car¬ 
riage  is  usually  not  lacking  in  a  genuine  Cas¬ 
tilian  grace;  he  does  not  cringe  before  his 
superiors  or  browbeat  those  beneath  him;  he 
is  invariably  soft  spoken;  he  moves  with  dig¬ 
nity,  and  he  has  always  been  distinguished  for 
elegance  and  good  taste  in  dress. 

The  aristocratic  quality  of  the  Sephardic 
Jew  is  unquestionably  explained  by  the  un¬ 
usual  position  which  he  had  held  for  centuries 
in  the  Spanish  Peninsula.  At  times,  it  is  true, 
he  was  the  victim  of  ferocious  persecution ;  yet 
there  were  century-long  intervals  when  he  was 
at  peace,  and  permitted  to  develop  socially 
and  intellectually  in  accordance  with  his  own 
genius.  His  religion  made  him  obnoxious  to 
both  the  other  faiths  that  controlled  Spain 
for  so  many  centuries,  the  Catholic  and  the 
Mohammedan,  yet  among  both  his  accom¬ 
plishments  had  given  him  an  important  posi¬ 
tion.  At  times  they  afflicted  him  with  the 
discriminations  that  were  the  common  fate  of 
the  Jews  in  the  Middle  Ages,  yet  his  skill  in 
administration,  in  finance,  in  scholarship,  and 
the  arts  made  him  indispensable  to  both  Moor 
and  Christian.  “The  Jews  reign  in  Granada,” 
was  the  wail  of  a  Moorish  writer — a  wail  that 


IO  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

has  a  decided  modern  ring — “they  have  di¬ 
vided  between  them  the  city  and  the  prov¬ 
inces  and  everywhere  one  of  this  accursed  race 
is  in  supreme  power.  They  collect  the  taxes, 
they  dress  magnificently  and  fare  sumptu¬ 
ously  while  the  true  believers  are  in  rags  and 
wretchedness.”  In  the  main  this  gives  a  fair 
picture  of  their  position  and  activities,  for,  as 
a  racial  group,  the  Spanish  Jews  were  rich 
and  well  educated;  they  were  the  financial 
and  commercial  leaders  of  Spain;  at  a  time 
when  banking  was  an  infamous  occupation 
and  the  taking  of  interest  a  ground  for  excom¬ 
munication  the  Jews  naturally  monopolized 
money-lending;  they  were  the  physicians  and 
scientists — “there  is  not  a  noble  or  a  prelate,” 
says  one  monkish  writer,  “but  keeps  a  Jewish 
devil  as  a  physician.”  Their  intellectual  emi¬ 
nence  is  sufficiently  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
Spinoza,  the  great  philosopher,  was  a  Spanish 
Jew, his  ancestors  having  been  expelledin  1492, 
at  the  time  of  the  great  persecution.  Besides 
these  intellectual  pursuits,  the  Spanish  Jews 
achieved  important  rank  in  the  state  and  even 
in  the  Church.  An  interesting  phase  of  their 
sojourn  in  Spain,  indeed,  and  one  that  has 
great  bearing  upon  the  question  of  Jewish 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  n 

assimilation,  is  the  extent  to  which  they 
changed  their  faith  to  Catholicism  and  mar¬ 
ried  into  the  greatest  families  of  Spain.  Many 
a  distinguished  court  official  and  many  a 
cardinal  and  bishop  had  a  large  mixture  of 
Jewish  blood,  and  it  is  an  historical  fact  that 
King  Ferdinand,  the  husband  of  Queen  Isa¬ 
bella — and  a  terrible  persecutor  of  Jews— was 
himself  descended  from  a  Jewish  ancestor. 
So  important  did  the  Spanish  Jews  become 
that  they  enjoyed  one  privilege  which  Jews  in 
no  other  country  possessed  during  the  Middle 
Ages  and  that  was  the  right  to  own  landed 
property.  The  greatest  of  them  maintained 
the  almost  royal  estate  of  a  Spanish  grandee. 

The  background  of  the  race  thus  furnishes 
a  sufficient  explanation  for  that  pride  and  ex¬ 
clusiveness — a  pride  and  exclusiveness  di¬ 
rected  chiefly  against  their  own  co-religion¬ 
ists — which  has  always  characterized  the 
Sephardic  Jews  even  in  the  United  States. 
And,  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  American 
Revolution,  these  were  practically  the  only 
kind  of  Jews  who  lived  in  this  country.  Their 
migration  to  American  soil  was  merely  an¬ 
other  outcome  of  the  persecution  which 
reached  its  height  in  1492.  The  conquest  of 


i2  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

the  Moors,  the  unification  of  Spain  under 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  and  the  increasing 
strength  of  the  Catholic  Church,  inspired  an 
outburst  of  Spanish  fanaticism,  which  found 
its  chief  expression  in  measures  directed 
against  its  Jewish  population.  The  Inquisi¬ 
tion  itself  was  established  in  Spain  for  the 
particular  benefit  of  the  Jews.  This  institu¬ 
tion  had  no  interest  in  orthodox  Jews,  of 
course,  for  the  purpose  of  the  Inquisition  was 
to  stamp  out  heresy,  and  the  Jew,  not  being  a 
Christian,  obviously  could  not  be  a  heretic; 
but  there  was  a  peculiar  type  of  Jew  that  en¬ 
listed  its  most  persistent  ministrations.  The 
existence  of  this  strange  breed  of  Jew,  and  its 
existence  in  great  numbers,  indicate  the  pe¬ 
culiar  position  which  Israel  had  obtained  in 
this  great  Catholic  dominion.  He  was 
known  as  the  Marrano — a  Spanish  word 
which  means  “damned”  and  “hog”;  another 
designation  was  crypto-Jew ,  or  Converso.  He 
was  a  Jew  who  was  supposed  to  have  em¬ 
braced  the  Christian  religion;  the  fact  that, 
in  1492,  there  were  more  than  100,000  Marran- 
os  in  Spain,  gives  some  idea  of  the  extent  to 
which  the  formal  acceptance  of  Christianity 
had  taken  place  among  this  supposedly  most 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  13 

tenacious  of  all  races.  But  the  trouble  arose 
from  a  general  suspicion  that  these  converts 
were  not  Christian  at  heart,  and  that  they  had 
merely  taken  this  new  religion  as  a  means  of 
escaping  the  social  and  legal  disabilities  that 
were  inflicted  upon  the  race.  That  they  in¬ 
dulged  in  Judaism  in  secret,  that  they  prac¬ 
tised  upon  their  sons  the  covenant  of  Abra¬ 
ham,  that  among  themselves  they  clung  to  the 
Jewish  dietary  laws — all  these  charges  were 
constantly  made  and  popularly  believed.  And 
in  the  main  the  accusations  probably  were  not 
untrue;  a  large  number  of  Maranos  doubt¬ 
less  remained  faithful  to  Catholicism  and 
their  blood  flows  in  a  considerable  proportion 
of  the  Spaniards  of  the  present  time;  but  the 
great  majority  were  Christians  only  as  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  convenience  and  profit.  And  this  was 
the  circumstance  that  led  to  the  establishment 
of  the  Spanish  Inquisition.  Its  original  pur¬ 
pose  was  to  spy  out  alien  backsliders,  both 
Moors  and  Jews,  and  to  bring  them  back  into 
the  fold  of  the  true  church.  The  setting  up 
of  this  tribunal  merely  marked  the  beginning 
of  the  persecutions  of  which  the  Jews  now  be¬ 
came  the  victims.  As  a  means  of  transform¬ 
ing  Jews  into  good  Christians  the  Inquisition 


i4  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

proved  a  failure;  and  the  government,  in 
1492,  decided  on  a  more  effective  method  of 
purgation;  it  issued  an  edict  expelling  all 
Jews  from  Spain. 

The  cruelty  with  which  this  law  was  en¬ 
forced,  the  dreadful  sufferings  which  it 
brought  upon  about  200,000  souls,  is  a  famil¬ 
iar  story;  it  finds  a  modern  counterpart,  even 
in  details,  in  the  expulsion  of  the  Armenians 
by  the  Turks  in  1915;  the  point  that  is  chiefly 
interesting  at  the  present  time  is  that  this  ex¬ 
pulsion  gave  America  its  first  Jews.  The  date 
is  significant — 1492;  that  was  the  same  year 
that  Columbus  sailed  on  his  first  voyage;  in¬ 
deed  his  diary  describes  how,  as  he  passed  out 
of  Palos  on  his  way  to  the  unknown  Western 
Sea,  he  spied  a  miserable  caravel  loaded  with 
Jews — exiles  under  the  recent  edict.  Cer¬ 
tain  modern  Jewbsh  historians  insist  that 
Columbus  was  himself  a  Jew,  or  at  least  a 
Marano;  what  is  indisputable  is  that  his  ex¬ 
pedition  contained  several  Jews,  and  that  the 
very  first  man  to  land  on  the  Western  Hemi¬ 
sphere  was  a  baptized  Jew,  Louis  de  Torres. 
The  influx  of  Spanish  Jews  which  followed 
was  never  large  in  its  proportions,  compared 
with  migrations  of  the  present  time;  indeed 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  15 

more  Russian  Jews  have  frequently  reached 
the  United  States  in  one  year  than  the  entire 
number  expelled  from  Spain  at  this  time; 
but  it  was  interesting  in  its  quality.  The 
great  mass  of  exiles  distributed  themselves  in 
more  friendly  European  countries,  especially 
in  Holland,  in  Italy,  and  above  all,  in  Turkey, 
where  their  descendants  in  great  numbers 
live  to-day,  still  speaking  the  Spanish  lan¬ 
guage  of  the  days  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella; 
but  a  certain  number  found  their  way  to  the 
New  World,  establishing  their  homes  in  the 
Spanish  colonies  almost  as  soon  as  they  were 
founded.  But  these  colonies  were  still  Span¬ 
ish,  and  in  most  of  them  the  Spanish  Inquisi¬ 
tion  was  promptly  set  up;  the  Jews  were  still 
Maranos,  and  as  such  subject  to  its  investiga¬ 
tions;  persecution  again  started  them  on  their 
travels,  and  the  only  hospitable  havens  in  the 
New  World  were  the  Dutch  and  English 
settlements.  Thus  the  Spanish  Jews  began 
to  arrive  on  American  soil  long  before  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  At  first  their 
welcome  was  not  especially  cordial.  In  1654, 
a  ship — referred  to  above — containing  twenty- 
seven  reached  New  Amsterdam,  but  Peter 
Stuyvesant,  the  Dutch  Governor,  received 


16  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

them  with  exceedingly  ill  grace,  and  it  was  not 
until  a  year  afterward  that,  under  peremptory 
orders  from  the  West  India  Company — in 
which  several  influential  Spanish  Jews  were 
stockholders — he  gave  them  permission  to  re¬ 
side  permanently  in  the  little  Dutch  settle¬ 
ment. 

Here  they  and  their  descendants  have  lived 
for  the  succeeding  two  hundred  and  sixty 
years.  The  Spanish  synagogue  on  Central 
Park  West  is  to-day  not  only  the  most  vener¬ 
able  Jewish  congregation  in  New  York,  but 
almost  the  oldest  religious  body  in  the  Ameri¬ 
can  metropolis;  it  is  older  than  Trinity 
Church  by  more  than  fifty  years.  This  Jew¬ 
ish  community — and  similar  Sephardic  colo¬ 
nies  were  established  in  most  important  Amer¬ 
ican  cities,  such  as  Boston,  Philadelphia, 
Baltimore,  and  Charleston — have  since  led  a 
career  of  exclusiveness  and  hauteur  that  is 
typically  Spanish.  As  in  Spain  centuries  ago 
these  Israelites  constantly  associated  with  the 
best  in  the  intellectual  and  social  life  of  the 
old  grandees,  so  to-day  the  New  York  Men- 
dozas,  Cardozos,  Acostas,  Pintos,  and  Cor¬ 
dobas — for  they  all  still  retain  their  old  Span¬ 
ish  names — find  their  most  congenial  associates 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  17 

among  cultivated  Gentiles.  They  have 
always  looked  down  upon  their  Russian  co¬ 
religionists,  and  even  upon  the  Germans,  as 
inferior  breeds.  No  anti-Semite  among  the 
native  American  stock  has  ever  regarded  the 
poor  Polish  immigrant  with  greater  aversion. 
There  was  a  time  when  a  Spanish  Jew  or  Jew¬ 
ess  who  married  a  German  or  Russian  co¬ 
religionist  would  be  promptly  disowned;  the 
hostility  to  such  alliances  was  much  stronger 
than  it  has  ever  been  between  Protestant  and 
Catholic.  The  Sephardim  have  always  had 
their  own  graveyards  in  which  German  and 
Russian  Jews  have  not  found  rest.  Part  of 
this  feeling  has  been  due  to  ancestral  pride; 
part  had  a  more  rational  basis,  for  it  is  incon¬ 
testable  that,  from  most  points  of  view,  the 
Spanish  Jews  are  superior  to  other  representa¬ 
tives  of  Israel.  There  are  only  a  few  of  them ; 
they  are  nearly  all  rich  or  at  least  prosperous; 
they  are  merchants,  bankers,  and  land  owners; 
they  are  not  pawnbrokers  or  peddlers  or  rag¬ 
pickers;  and  they  have  a  distinct  talent  for 
public  life.  It  is  no  accident  that  the  most 
distinguished  Jewish  statesman  of  Great 
Britain,  Disraeli,  was  a  descendant  of  Spanish 
Jews,  and  that  the  greatest  public  man  of 


18  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

American  Jewry,  Judah  P.  Benjamin,  Secre¬ 
tary  of  State  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  and 
probably  the  most  adroit  brain  in  the  Secession 
movement,  belonged  to  the  same  branch  of  the 
race.  It  is  also  significant  that  the  Jew  who 
has  reached  the  most  powerful  position  of  any 
member  of  his  race  in  recent  American  life, 
Mr.  Bernard  Baruch,  also  traces  his  origin  to 
the  Jews  of  Spain. 

So  long  as  the  Jewish  population  was  lim¬ 
ited  chiefly  to  Spanish  Jews  America  had 
nothing  that  remotely  resembled  a  Jewish 
“problem.”  Before  the  American  Revolu¬ 
tion  practically  the  whole  Jewish  population 
of  this  country  consisted  of  these  Sephardim. 
They  played  an  honourable  part  in  the  Revo¬ 
lution  and  lived  on  terms  of  friendship  and  re¬ 
spect  with  the  other  racial  elements.  There 
were  only  about  2,000  of  them  in  the  whole 
United  States  at  that  time.  Just  how  many 
there  are  now  is  not  known ;  that  their  number 
is  steadily  decreasing  is  apparent,  and  here 
again  the  explanation  has  a  great  importance; 
the  Spanish  Jews  are  becoming  fewer  through 
inter-marriage  not  with  other  branches  of  the 
race,  but  with  Gentiles.  In  England  it  is  said 
that  the  Spanish  Jews  have  practically  disap- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  19 

peared,  and,  as  in  this  country,  through  inter¬ 
marriage  with  Christians.  I  have  instanced 
above  three  Sephardic  Jews  who  have  reached 
high  public  station  in  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States:  Disraeli,  Benjamin,  and 
Baruch.  All  three  of  these  men  married 
Christians.  The  tendency  that  was  so  com¬ 
mon  five  and  six  hundred  years  ago  in  Spain, 
when  cardinals  and  kings  acknowledged  a 
mixture  of  Jewish  blood,  is  similarly  apparent 
in  the  England  and  America  of  the  present 
time. 

II 

Neither  did  the  second  phase  of  Jewish  im¬ 
migration  create  anything  that  could  be  called 
a  “problem.”  This  was  the  much  larger  in¬ 
flux  of  German  Jews,  which  began  soon  after 
the  Battle  of  Waterloo,  reached  a  considerable 
proportion  in  the  ’forties  and  ’fifties  and  fell 
off  appreciably  in  the  late  ’seventies.  These 
dates  indicate  that  German  Jewish  immigra¬ 
tion  had  about  the  same  rise  and  fall 
as  German  immigration  in  general,  and 
it  is  a  fact  that  it  was  not  a  dis¬ 
tinct  movement  but  was  merely  part  of 
the  general  flow  of  German  immigrants  to  this 


20  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

country.  German  Jews  came  here  for  the 
same  reason  that  other  Germans  came;  in  part 
the  motive  was  economic,  the  desire  to  get  a 
better  chance  at  life,  and  in  part  the  motive 
was  political.  German  Jews  participated  ex¬ 
tensively  in  the  German  liberal  movement  of 
’48;  when  it  failed  they  emigrated  in  large 
numbers,  precisely  as  did  their  Christian  as¬ 
sociates;  the  two  most  distinguished  of  these 
political  refugees  were  Carl  Schurz,  a  Gentile, 
and  Abraham  Jacobi,  a  Jew.  But  racially 
and  culturally  the  German  Jew  seemed  an 
entirely  different  person  from  his  Spanish 
predecessor.  He  belonged  to  the  second  and 
northern  division  of  Israel,  the  type  which  the 
Jewish  writers  designate  as  the  Askenazim. 
Physically  he  was  probably  inferior  to  the 
Sephardim.  His  features  were  inclined  to  be 
coarser, his  lips  thicker, his  hair  morewoolly  in 
its  texture,  his  head  round  rather  than  long; 
his  physical  type  was  not  invariably  brunette, 
for  blond  hair  and  blue  eyes  were  not  un¬ 
common.  These  points,  however,  can  be 
pushed  too  far;  the  women  were  not  infre¬ 
quently  exceedingly  beautiful,  and  the  most 
famous  of  American  Jewesses  belonged  to 
the  Germanic  branch.  This  was  Rebecca 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  21 

Gratz,  a  Jewess  distinguished  for  her  beauty 
and  piety,  and  for  her  friendships  with  emi¬ 
nent  Americans.  There  is  a  tradition  that 
Henry  Clay  was  an  unsuccessful  suitor,  and 
one  of  her  most  distinguished  friends  was 
Washington  Irving.  This  later  association 
had  important  literary  consequences;  Irving 
was  likewise  a  close  friend  of  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
whom  he  used  frequently  to  visit  at  Abbots¬ 
ford;  it  is  said  that  his  description  of  Miss 
Gratz,  of  her  loveliness  of  person,  her  fine¬ 
ness  of  character,  her  devotion  to  her  re¬ 
ligion  and  her  race — a  devotion  that  had 
prevented  her  from  marrying,  most  of  the 
men  with  whom  she  associated  having  been 
Christians — so  fired  the  romantic  imagination 
of  Scott  that  he  put  her  in  the  novel  that 
he  was  then  writing.  In  this  way  it  hap¬ 
pened  that  Scott’s  most  famous  woman  char¬ 
acter,  his  Rebecca  of  “Ivanhoe,”  was  drawn 
from  Rebecca  Gratz  of  Philadelphia. 

In  the  main,  however,  the  German  Jew  was 
inferior,  in  manners,  intelligence,  and  social 
adaptability,  to  the  Spanish  type.  In  num¬ 
bers  he  was  much  greater;  from  1815  to  about 
1880,  when  German-Jewish  immigration,  on 
a  large  scale,  came  to  an  end — in  this  follow- 


22  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ing  the  course  of  German  immigration  in 
general,  of  which,  as  already  said,  it  was 
merely  one  phase — probably  not  far  from 
200,000  German  Jews  arrived,  though  scien¬ 
tific  statistics  are  not  available.  With  them 
arrived  those  characteristically  Jewish  figures 
— the  rag  picker,  the  itinerant  peddler,  the 
pawnbroker,  the  petty  tradesman.  These 
German  Jews  were  not  workers;  for  most 
part  they  were  middlemen.  Many  of  the 
best  known  Jewish  families  of  the  United 
States  founded  their  fortunes  in  these  humble 
occupations.  The  Seligmans,  who  estab¬ 
lished  one  of  the  most  important  Jewish- 
American  banking  houses,  were  originally 
peddlers  and  clothing  merchants;  so  was 
Solomon  Loeb,  who  founded  the  great  bank¬ 
ing  house  of  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Company;  and 
Benjamin  Altman,  who  died  the  owner  of  the 
most  distinguished  department  store  in  New 
York  and  the  possessor  of  one  of  the  greatest 
collections  of  paintings  ever  assembled  by 
an  American — a  collection  which,  with  fine 
public  spirit,  he  willed  to  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  of  Art — is  said  to  have  started  his 
business  career  with  a  pack  on  his  back.  Mr. 
Oscar  S.  Straus,  ex-Ambassador  to  Turkey, 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  23 

has  recently  given,  in  his  very  interesting 
memoirs,  a  charming  picture  of  a  German- 
Jewish  family  attempting  to  establish  itself 
economically  in  its  new  environment.  Mr. 
Straus’s  father  was  an  itinerant  peddler  in  the 
South;  he  drove  a  wagon  from  plantation  to 
plantation,  disposing  of  a  miscellaneous  cargo 
of  “Yankee  notions.”  Such  a  peddler  was  a 
welcome  figure  in  Southern  life  preceding  the 
Civil  War;  his  coming  was  an  annual  event 
that  was  eagerly  anticipated;  he  usually  be¬ 
came  the  guest  of  one  of  the  planters  in  the 
community  in  which  he  set  up  his  temporary 
emporium,  taking  his  meals  at  the  family 
table;  his  host  would  never  accept  pay  for 
this  entertainment,  but  the  Jewish  merchant, 
as  an  acknowledgment  of  the  hospitality,  in¬ 
variably  made  a  parting  gift  to  the  wife  or 
daughter— not  uncommonly  an  unusually  fine 
piece  of  dress  goods.  It  may  well  be  imagined 
that  the  arrival  of  an  exotic  figure  of  this 
kind,  with  his  conversation  of  great  cities  and 
his  reminiscences  of  European  life,  gave  a 
welcome  and  bazaar-like  colour  to  the  some¬ 
what  monotonous  life  of  a  Southern  planta¬ 
tion;  and  this  scene  also  is  typical  of  the 
entirely  kindly  relations  that  prevailed  sixty 


24  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

years  ago  between  the  native  population  and 
the  Jewish  immigrant. 

The  great  point  to  be  kept  in  mind  is  that 
these  German  Jews  did  not  congregate  in  vast 
colonies  in  the  great  seaboard  cities.  New 
York  had  its  slums  in  the  era  preceding  the 
Civil  War,  and  they  were  located  practically 
where  they  are  to-day — in  the  great  section 
east  of  the  Bowery  and  south  of  Fourteenth 
Street.  Here  a  condition  of  overcrowding 
existed  which  was  even  more  malodorous  than 
that  of  the  present  time;  but  the  inhabitants 
were  almost  exclusively  Irish  and  German 
immigrants.  The  fact  that  the  German  Jew 
was  not  a  factory  worker  or  a  labouring  man, 
but  a  small  tradesman,  necessarily  caused  him 
to  distribute  himself  pretty  generally  through¬ 
out  the  country.  He  was  thus  found  in 
every  state,  large  and  small;  he  was  a  con¬ 
stant  figure  in  all  Southern  cities  and  towns; 
he  followed  the  western  tide  of  migration 
after  the  Civil  War;  his  little  hastily  as¬ 
sembled  store,  pitched  frequently  under  a 
tent,  was  a  common  sight  in  the  early  Cali¬ 
fornia  settlements;  the  Jewish  packman  oc¬ 
casionally  appears  in  the  pages  of  Bret  Harte; 
and  the  Jewish  peddler  early  became  a  stock 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  25 

figure  on  the  American  stage.  Perhaps  the 
public  feeling  now  and  then  was  a  little  con¬ 
temptuous;  the  Jewish  sharpness  in  trading 
created  a  veritable  literature  of  Jewish  anec¬ 
dotes;  but  the  American  attitude  was  always 
good  natured;  the  idea  that  this  race  was  a 
“menace”  to  American  institutions  never  oc¬ 
curred  to  the  most  harebrained  of  contem¬ 
porary  thinkers.  In  certain  respects  the 
German  Jew  displayed  a  greater  tendency  to 
“assimilation”  than  did  his  Spanish  prede¬ 
cessor. 

The  change  in  the  ritual  of  the  syna¬ 
gogue,  for  which  the  German  Jew  was 
responsible,  is  most  significant  from  this  point 
of  view.  Fundamentally  this  represented  an 
attempt  to  Occidentalize  somewhat  the  Jew¬ 
ish  services — to  make  them  more  like  the  pro¬ 
ceedings  in  Christian  churches.  Meetings 
were  held  Sunday  instead  of  Saturday;  Eng¬ 
lish  sermons  were  introduced;  organs  and 
choirs  became  regular  features  of  the  pro¬ 
gramme;  the  men  removed  their  hats  and  the 
women  appeared  in  bonnets  instead  of  shawls. 
The  German  Jews  greatly  shocked  their  more 
conservative  Spanish  co-religionists  by  the  ex¬ 
tent  to  which  they  ignored  the  dietary  laws; 


26  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ham  and  bacon  not  infrequently  appeared 
upon  their  breakfast  tables;  and  oysters,  lob¬ 
sters,  and  other  forbiddencreatures  tempted  the 
Jewish  appetite  as  irresistibly  as  the  Gentile. 
Jewish  children  formed  a  small  minority  in 
every  public  school  and  high  school;  a  still 
smaller  contingent  appeared  in  all  the  col¬ 
leges — thirty  and  forty  years  ago  Yale,  Har¬ 
vard,  and  Princeton  usually  had  four  or  five 
in  every  graduating  class ;  now  and  then  a  Ger¬ 
man  Jew  was  elected  to  one  of  the  most  exclu¬ 
sive  city  clubs — though  here,  it  must  be 
admitted,  progress  was  more  difficult.  It 
would  be  absurd  to  deny  that  a  certain  preju¬ 
dice  existed  against  the  Jews,  even  in  the  days 
when  the  Spanish  and  German  elements  con¬ 
stituted  almost  exclusively  American  Israel, 
but  it  was  not  intense  or  bitter,  and  never 
reached  the  proportions  of  a  public  issue. 
Occasionally  the  desire  of  Jews  to  be  exempted 
from  the  provisions  of  Sunday  laws — on  the 
ground,  that,  as  orthodox  Hebrews,  they  kept 
their  establishments  closed  on  Saturdays — 
caused  a  ripple  of  dissatisfaction;  the  refusal 
of  summer  hotels  to  admit  them  led  to  several 
lawsuits  of  sensational  character;  but,  in  the 
main,  the  Gentile  population  showed  little 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  27 

alarm  about  their  progress,  and  anti-Semitism 
was  a  word  whose  significance  few  Americans 
remotely  understood. 

Ill 

The  facts  of  chief  importance  are  that  the 
Jewish  population  before  1880  consisted  al¬ 
most  exclusively  of  Spanish  and  German 
J ews,  or  their  descendants ;  that  they  were  com¬ 
paratively  few  in  number;  that  they  were 
bankers  or  tradesmen,  large  and  small;  that 
they  did  not  form  a  compact  mass  of  wretched¬ 
ness  in  large  cities;  that,  in  education,  man¬ 
ners,  and  social  opportunities  their  past  did 
not  compare  unfavourably  with  that  of  the 
other  immigrating  races.  It  is  the  year  1881 
that  marks  the  beginning  of  the  American 
Jewish  “problem”  as  that  word  is  commonly 
understood.  Then  began  the  influx,  on  an 
enormous  scale,  of  an  entirely  different  type 
of  Judaism  from  the  staid  Spanish  Jew  and 
the  energetic  German  of  the  previous  genera¬ 
tions.  It  is  customary  to  speak  of  Israel  as  a 
scattered  people,  as  a  race  that  is  constantly 
seeking  a  home  among  other  nations,  as  one 
that  really  possesses  no  settled  abode  of  its 
own.  In  a  sense  that  is  true;  but  in  its  larger 


28  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

aspects  it  is  not  true  at  all.  For  the  Jews,  as 
a  mass,  have  inhabited  the  same  territory  for 
at  least  a  thousand  years.  At  the  present 
time  there  are  perhaps  9,000,000  Jews  in 
Europe.  Comparatively  small  numbers  are 
found  in  all  countries — perhaps  100,000  in 
France,  240,000  in  the  United  Kingdom — 
despite  the  ribald  accusation  that  Scotland 
is  no  place  for  the  Jews,  the  record  discloses 
about  27,000  north  of  the  Tweed — 15,000  in 
Belgium,  8,000  in  Greece,  and  so  on.  These 
are  merely  the  fringes  of  European  Israel;  of 
the  9,000,000  Jews  living  in  Europe,  not  far 
from  7,000,000  are  congregated  as  a  mass  in 
one  rather  restricted  area.*  This  territory 
comprises  western  Russia,  eastern  Prussia,  and 
northern  Austria.  One  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ago  not  a  square  mile  of  this  region  be¬ 
longed  to  the  three  countries  named;  all  of  it 
was  part  of  the  ancient  Kingdom  of  Poland. 
Until  the  partitions  of  Poland  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  neither  Russia,  Prus¬ 
sia,  nor  Austria  had  any  large  number  of 
Jews;  their  present  Jewish  populations,  that 
is,  are  an  inheritance  from  that  unholy  piece 


*  These  statistics  are  taken  from  “The  Jews,”  a  very  valuable  work 
Dr.  Maurice  Fishberg,  of  New  York. 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  29 

of  statecraft.  There  is  thus  a  certain  inaccu¬ 
racy  in  referring  to  Russian  and  Austrian  and 
Polish  Jews;  in  reality,  they  are  all  Polish 
Jews.  The  great  majority  of  all  the  Jews 
in  the  world  found  their  way  into  Poland  in 
the  Middle  Ages  and  in  that  country  their  de¬ 
scendants  have  remained  until  thepresenttime. 
Here,  then,  is  the  present  Jewish  home — or  at 
least  here  it  was  in  1881,  but  there  is  one  coun¬ 
try  now  which  also  has  a  very  large  Jewish 
population.  That  is  the  United  States.  In 
forty  years,  that  is,  American  Jews  have 
grown  in  numbers  from  200,000  to  3,000,000.* 
And  the  significant  fact  is  that  this  growth 
represents  a  type  of  Jew  that  was  hardly 
known  to  this  country  in  1881.  Almost  all  of 
our  American  Jews  have  come  from  those 
provinces  of  Poland  which  were  until  recently 
parts  of  Russia,  Prussia,  and  Austria.  The 
transplantation  of  millions  of  Jews  from  their 
mediaeval  home  in  Central  Europe — a  trans¬ 
plantation  which  was  perhaps  not  at  first  de¬ 
liberate  and  conscious,  but  which  is  becoming 
increasingly  so — forms  not  only  the  most 
startling  migration  in  the  history  of  Israel, 

*  Certain  authorities  insist  that  there  are  more  than  3,000,000,  but,  in  the 
lack  of  absolute  information,  this  figure  may  be  taken  as  a  conservative  esti¬ 


mate. 


3o  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

but  gives  the  United  States  its  great  “Jewish 
problem.”  Unless  the  influx  is  artificially 
dammed  there  is  not  the  slightest  question  that, 
in  less  than  a  generation,  this  great  mass  of 
Central  European  Jews  will  have  been  moved 
to  this  country.  America  will  fulfill  the  role 
which  Poland  filled  in  the  Middle  Ages  as 
the  great  home  of  the  Jewish  race.  , 

It  would  have  been  strange  if  this  eastern 
European  Jew  did  not  present  such  dissimi¬ 
larities  to  the  type  of  Jew  which  had  already 
been  domesticated  here  as  to  seem  almost  to 
belong  to  an  entirely  different  race.  His  his¬ 
tory  had  been  a  deplorable  one.  Possibly  his 
remote  ancestors  may  have  resembled  the 
Spanish  Jew  or  the  Jew  from  Bavaria  and  the 
Rhineland,  but  centuries  of  separation,  in  the 
era  when  means  of  communication  were  all 
but  unknown,  had  produced  a  type  that 
had  little  in  common  except  a  common  re¬ 
ligion.  The  Polish  Jew  had  lived  for  cen¬ 
turies  among  Slavs  and  physically  he  had 
taken  on  so  many  Slavic  characteristics  that 
there  is  little  doubt  that  in  his  veins  there 
flows  a  considerable  amount  of  Slavic  blood — 
just  as  in  the  Spanish  Jews  there  flows  a 
considerable  mixture  of  Spanish  blood.  The 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  31 

brunette  type — the  Jew  of  coal-black  eyes 
and  raven  hair — is  perhaps  the  most  com¬ 
monly  met  among  the  Polish  Jews,  but  there 
was  a  considerable  proportion  of  blonds — 
Jews  and  Jewesses  with  the  fair  hair  and  the 
blue  and  gray  eyes  that  unquestionably  in¬ 
dicate  a  considerable  mixture  with  other 
races.  Even  that  feature  which  is  so  dear  to 
the  cartoonist,  the  hooked  nose,  is  infre¬ 
quently  found  among  the  so-called  Russian 
Jews;  their  nose  is  more  commonly  retrousse 
or  pug.  The  hair  is  not  always  kinky  or 
curly,  but  more  commonly  straight — again  a 
Slavic  characteristic.  While  physically  the 
Eastern  Jew  frequently  resembled  the  peoples 
among  which  he  had  lived  for  centuries,  and 
so  presented  traits  which  greatly  contrasted 
with  his  co-religionists  already  established  in 
this  country,  mentally  and  spiritually  he  is 
something  entirely  different. 

The  thing  that  marked  him  most  conspicu¬ 
ously  was  his  religious  orthodoxy.  The  long, 
unkempt  beards,  the  trailing  hair,  the  little 
curls  about  the  ears — these  carefully  preserved 
stigmata  of  traditional  Israel  were  merely 
the  outward  signs  of  lives  that  were  lived 
strictly  according  to  the  teachings  of  rab- 


32  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

binical  law.  It  is  perhaps  not  strange  that 
the  Jewish  communities  already  established 
in  this  country  regarded  these  strange  ap¬ 
paritions  as  peoples  alien  to  themselves,  and 
that,  although  they  sympathized  with  their 
sufferings  and  gladly  assisted  in  establishing 
them  in  their  new  environment,  they  refused 
to  regard  them  as  social  equals,  abhorred  the 
idea  of  intermarriage,  called  them  uPo- 
laks”  and  “hinter  Berliners” — and  practised 
against  them,  indeed,  many  of  the  discrimi¬ 
nations  which  all  Jews  have  for  generations 
suffered  at  the  hands  of  their  Gentile  com¬ 
patriots. 

Strange  as  these  Eastern  Jews  may  have 
seemed  in  American  eyes,  their  own  bewilder¬ 
ment  amid  this  new  civilization  was  even 
greater.  It  would  probably  be  impossible  to 
find  two  states  of  society  more  dissimilar 
than  Russia  and  the  United  States.  These 
new  Jewish  immigrants  came  from  a  country 
that  was  still  living  in  the  Middle  Ages,  for 
Russia  represented  a  condition  of  progress  that 
was  little  removed  from,  say,  England  in  the 
Twelfth  Century.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  up  to  1 86 1  serfdom — a  modified  form  of 
slavery — had  been  the  social  status  of  the 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  33 

Russian  peasant;  though  a  ukase  of  the  Czar 
had  ostensibly  made  him  a  free  man,  his 
actual  condition  had  little  changed;  his  life 
was  still  a  squalid  and  poverty-stricken 
routine;  he  was  totally  illiterate  and  he  lived 
apparently  only  to  be  exploited  by  the  no¬ 
bility  and  the  government.  The  graces  and 
decencies  of  life  had  never  been  his  portion; 
he  was  about  as  ignorant  and  stupid  a  human 
being  as  the  earth  contained.  Russia  was  a 
great  shambling  agricultural  country;  at  least 
90  per  cent,  of  the  population  lived  on  the 
farm;  agricultural  methods  were  extremely 
primitive;  that  industrialism  which  is  the 
great  feature  of  modern  life  had  made  prac¬ 
tically  no  progress.  There  were  virtually 
only  two  orders  of  society:  this  great  sluggish 
peasantry,  ill-fed,  ill-housed,  purposely  kept 
in  ignorance  and  over-burdened  with  taxes, 
and  above  them  a  small  group  of  exploiting 
nobles.  Thus  the  environment  to  which  the 
Russian  Jews  had  been  accustomed  for  many 
centuries  was  that  of  an  inferior  civilization. 
And  in  this  Russia,  numerous  as  the  Russian 
Jews  were,  they  had  never  been  anything  but 
aliens.  The  mediaeval  conception  of  the  Jew 
as  a  thing  apart,  as  a  cursed  creature  doomed 


34  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

to  expiate  the  crime  of  the  Crucifixion  by  ages 
of  wandering  and  misery,  represented  Russian 
statesmanship  as  applied  to  this  alien  people. 
The  Spanish  and  Portuguese  Jews  who 
reached  America  in  the  Seventeenth  Century 
spoke  Spanish  and  Portuguese;  the  German 
Jews  who  came  in  the  Nineteenth  Century 
spoke  German;  but  the  Eastern  Jews,  though 
they  had  lived  for  centuries  in  Poland  and 
Russia,  spoke  neither  Polish  nor  Russian,  but 
an  outlandish  jargon,  a  combination  of  Ger¬ 
man  and  Hebrew,  known  as  Yiddish.  The 
fact  that  these  people  had  not  acquired  as  their 
vernacular  the  speech  of  the  peoples  among 
which  they  had  sojourned  so  long,  tells  their 
story.  In  these  old  Polish  provinces  of  Rus¬ 
sia  the  Jews  had  always  been  an  imperium  in 
imperio.  They  were  not  citizens;  they  were 
not  a  part  of  the  Russian  state;  they  were 
a  separate  entity,  to  a  considerable  extent 
being  governed  by  their  own  laws.  The 
Russian  could  no  more  convince  of  the 
Jews  being  admitted  to  the  rights  of  citi¬ 
zenship  than  the  Turk  could  look  upon 
his  non-Mohammedan  populations  as  free 
men  entitled  to  the  same  privileges  as 
Moslems.  The  idea  of  citizenship  as  devel- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  35 

oped  in  Anglo-Saxon  countries — the  concep¬ 
tion  that  every  man,  woman,  and  child  has  the 
same  rights  before  the  law — was  entirely  un¬ 
known  to  the  half-western,  half-Oriental  Rus¬ 
sian  state;  the  Jews  were  simply  strangers, 
who  really  had  no  right  to  be  living  amid 
Christian  peoples  and  who  could  justly  be 
controlled  by  special  laws.  They  paid  taxes 
which  their  Christian  neighbours  did  not  pay; 
they  were  prohibited  from  owning  or  culti¬ 
vating  the  soil ;  they  could  not  be  admitted  to 
schools  and  universities  except  under  certain 
restrictions.  The  Russian  code  contained 
more  than  one  thousand  articles  directed 
exclusively  against  the  Jews.  The  most  seri¬ 
ous  were  those  which  restricted  his  rights  of 
residence.  Not  only  was  the  Russian  Jew 
compelled  to  live  in  cities,  but  in  cities  in 
a  certain  part  of  the  Empire — the  seven¬ 
teen  western  provinces  which  formed  the 
famous  Pale  of  Settlement.  He  therefore 
did  not  possess  those  indispensable  rights 
of  a  free  man — of  selecting  the  place  where 
one  will  live  and  the  occupation  in  which 
one  chooses  to  engage.  If  the  American 
Government  should  take  10,000,000  of  its 
citizens,  drive  them  into  the  cities  of  New 


36  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

England,  prohibit  them  from  living  any¬ 
where  else,  oblige  them  to  follow  certain 
occupations,  forbid  them  to  own  land,  and 
heap  upon  them  numerous  other  restrictions 
from  which  the  mass  of  the  population  was 
free,  we  should  reproduce  a  condition  which 
resembles  the  fundamental  fact  in  the  ex¬ 
istence  of  the  Jews  in  Russia.  The  over¬ 
crowding,  the  squalor,  the  poverty,  the  phy¬ 
sical  misery  that  resulted  from  this  herding 
are  indescribable;  the  gaunt  and  hunted  faces, 
the  weary  eyes,  the  hollow  chests  and  the 
shrivelled  frames  of  the  shiploads  of  human 
wretchedness  that  began  to  land  at  Castle 
Garden  in  the  ’eighties  only  faintly  reflected 
the  hideous  restrictions  to  which  these  people 
had  so  long  been  subjected. 

Despite  these  limitations,  the  Jews  had  at¬ 
tained  a  definite  economic  position  in  Russian 
society.  Russia,  as  already  made  clear,  had 
only  two  social  orders — its  great  impassive 
peasantry  and  its  nobles.  Yet  a  country 
with  160,000,000  people,  even  though  most 
of  them  are  engaged  in  agriculture,  must 
necessarily  stand  in  need  of  business  men. 
The  Russian  masses  themselves  were  too  ig¬ 
norant  and  too  indolent  to  fulfill  this  function 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  37 

and  the  Russian  nobles,  in  accordance  with  the 
standards  of  their  caste,  regarded  “trade”  as 
degrading.  Naturally  the  Jew,  with  his  keen 
aptitude  for  business,  stepped  into  the  vacant 
place.  For  centuries  the  Jews  had  thus  been 
the  middlemen  of  Russia.  The  laws  restrict¬ 
ing  residence  did  not  apply  to  the  merchant 
class;  at  all  times  these  laws  were  constantly 
evaded;  the  result  was  that  in  every  part  of 
Russia  trade  and  commerce  were  in  Jewish 
hands.  They  were  the  shopkeepers,  large 
and  small,  the  bankers,  the  commission  men, 
the  grain  merchants,  the  money  lenders,  the 
vodka  dealers,  the  tavern  and  hotel  keepers; 
above  all — and  this  was  the  occupation  that 
made  them  especially  unpopular  with  the 
peasantry — they  were  the  stewards  of  the 
nobility,  the'  managers  of  their  estates,  the 
men  whose  business  it  was  to  wring  the  last 
copek  which  the  much-burdened  husbandman 
could  pay  as  rent.  The  Jew  was  the  obnox¬ 
ious  person  who  moved  between  the  manor 
and  the  hut,  and  the  fact  that  he  usually 
farmed  the  revenue  on  shares  made  him  an 
especially  rapacious  persecutor  in  the  peas¬ 
ants’  eyes.  His  position  as  liquor  seller — and 
alcoholism  was  the  besetting  vice  of  the  mujik 


38  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

— increased  the  public  odium  in  which  he  was 
generally  held. 

Yet  this  influx  from  Russia  contained  also 
a  considerable  mass  of  manual  workers,  for 
the  most  part  of  the  unskilled  kind,  though 
skilled  Jewish  workmen  were  not  unknown. 
The  Russians  themselves  were  tillers  of  the 
soil  and  in  the  cities  of  the  Pale  the  great 
majority  of  the  handicraftsmen  were  Jews. 
They  were  carpenters,  house  painters,  plumb¬ 
ers,  glaziers — indeed  they  worked  as  artisans 
in  practically  every  occupation,  usually  for 
the  most  beggarly  wages ;  above  all,  however, 
they  were  workers  in  the  tailoring  trades.  Sev¬ 
eral  explanations  have  been  furnished  for  the 
mysterious  attraction  which  the  manufacture 
of  wearing  apparel  has  for  the  Jew.  One 
of  the  most  plausible  is  that  it  is  merely  a 
natural  development  from  dealing  in  second¬ 
hand  clothing — one  of  the  inferior  occupa¬ 
tions  to  which  the  Jew  was  reduced  by  legal 
restrictions.  Another  is  that  the  Jew  is,  com¬ 
pared  with  the  average  Gentile,  of  poor  phy¬ 
sique,  with  less  muscular  power,  and  that  he 
is  therefore  better  adapted  to  the  needle  trades 
than  to  more  robust  occupations.  Whatever 
the  explanation,  the  fact  remains  that  the 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  39 

clothing  business  in  Russia,  both  on  the  manu¬ 
facturing  and  the  merchandizing  side,  has  for 
generations  been  a  Jewish  monopoly.  Simi¬ 
larly  the  great  mass  of  Jewish  artisans  in 
America  are  workers  in  the  clothing  trades, 
and  this  at  once  emphasizes  another  respect  in 
which  Russian  Jewish  immigration  differs 
from  that  which  had  come  from  Spain  and 
from  Germany.  The  Spanish  Jews  were 
mainly  bankers,  high-class  merchants  and 
tradesmen,  professional  men  and  scholars;  the 
Germans,  when  they  arrived — though  their 
economic  status  has  vastly  improved — were 
small  shopkeepers,  peddlers,  rag  pickers, 
pawnbrokers;  but  the  Russian  Jews,  besides 
having  a  large  number  of  this  type  of  trades¬ 
men,  also  possessed  a  large  proportion  of  un¬ 
skilled  workers  in  the  needle  trades,  hectic  in 
their  industry,  remorseless  in  their  competitive 
zeal. 

Yet  the  motive  that  first  started  this  great 
Western  exodus  was  not  economic.  The 
Russian  Jews  were  not  primarily  immigrants 
looking  for  jobs;  they  were  rather  political 
refugees.  America’s  present  Jewish  problem 
has  its  origin  in  a  sensational  event  of  the 
year  1881.  The  crazy  Nihilist  who  hurled  a 


4o  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

bomb  at  Czar  Alexander  II  was  the  ultimate 
creator  of  the  New  York  Ghetto  and  the  man 
who  added  3,000,000  Jews  to  the  American 
population.  For  the  direct  result  of  that  act 
was  to  put  the  reactionary  party  into  power 
in  Russia.  The  murdered  Czar  had  been 
liberal  in  his  tendencies;  he  had  emancipated 
the  serfs,  and,  at  the  moment  of  his  assassi¬ 
nation,  he  was  about  to  issue  a  Russian  Con¬ 
stitution.  His  death  ended  all  that.  It 
caused  a  national  revulsion  against  every¬ 
thing  resembling  free  institutions — or,  as 
the  Russian  votaries  of  autocracy  put  it, 
the  “rotten  parliamentarism  of  the  West.” 
Anything  suggesting  democracy  became  ana¬ 
thema  in  the  eyes  of  these  new  forces.  One  of 
the  strangest  figures  in  modern  history  now 
became  the  supreme  power  in  Russia.  This 
was  M.  Pobiedonostseff,  the  Procurator  of 
the  Holy  Synod.  Compared  to  this  sharp- 
featured  Russian  obscurantist,  Bismarck  was 
a  democrat  and  the  ex-Kaiser  a  second  edition 
of  Thomas  Jefferson.  In  his  philosophy  the 
greatest  evil  of  modern  life  was  the  thing 
usually  known  as  “progress.”  Popular  edu¬ 
cation,  freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press, 
religious  toleration,  representative  govern- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  41 

ment — these  modern  ideas  were  the  inventions 
of  the  devil,  and,  as  such,  would  necessarily 
bring  destruction  to  Holy  Russia.  Pobie- 
donostseff,  therefore,  set  himself  to  bringing 
the  darkest  period  of  the  Middle  Ages  back  to 
Russia — though  most  observers  believe  that 
Russia  had  not  emerged  very  far  from  that 
period.  In  his  new  and  purified  Russia  there 
were  three  great  pillars — autocracy,  Greek 
orthodoxy,  and  nationalism,  and  anything  or 
anybody  that  interfered  with  these  three 
great  aims  was  to  be  ruthlessly  destroyed. 
Naturally  one  of  the  most  formidable  obsta¬ 
cles  in  his  way  were  the  Jews.  They  were 
the  enemies— or  were  so  regarded — of  Russian 
nationalism — for  they  were  not  Russians,  and, 
according  to  the  accepted  idea,  never  could 
become  such ;  neither  were  they  members  of 
the  Greek  Orthodox  Church,  and  not  likely  to 
be  converted.  Necessarily  any  complete 
Russification  of  Russia  must  dispose  first  of 
all  of  the  Jews.  When  asked  how  he  was  to 
get  rid  of  them,  PobiedonostsefT  replied — at 
least  he  is  reported  as  replying,  “One  third 
will  be  converted,  one  third  will  be  massacred, 
and  one  third  will  emigrate.”  To  just  what 
extent  the  first  item  in  this  programme  was 


42  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

carried  through  is  not  definitely  known;  the 
indications  are  that  it  was  not  particularly 
successful.  The  persecutions  and  pogroms 
which  now  began  all  over  Russia,  and  which 
have  continued  with  only  occasional  breathing 
spells  up  to  the  present  time,  represented  a 
sincere  effort  to  make  good  on  the  second  de¬ 
tail.  These  onslaughts  on  the  Jews  were  in¬ 
deed  of  an  atrocious  character.  Whatever 
the  Russian  masses  may  have  thought  of  the 
governmental  programme  as  a  whole,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  its  anti-Jewish  activities  were 
popular,  for  the  sons  of  Israel  were  every¬ 
where  detested.  The  earliest  manifestations 
took  the  form  of  expulsions  from  other  parts 
of  Russia  into  the  Pale  of  Settlement.  The 
residential  laws  had  largely  fallen  into  abey¬ 
ance  during  the  mild  rule  of  Alexander  II, 
and  thousands  of  Jews  were  illegally  living 
in  prohibited  areas.  The  May  laws  of  1 88 1 
required  all  these  unfortunates  to  pull  up 
stakes  and  withdraw  to  the  Pale,  and,  when 
they  did  not  move  fast  enough,  the  Cossacks 
fell  upon  them  and  drove  them  from  their 
homes  with  every  conceivable  form  of  bru¬ 
tality. 

These  expulsions  and  these  massacres  had 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  43 

another  purpose — and  one  which  was  chiefly 
interesting  to  the  United  States.  When  the 
Jews  protested  against  these  proceedings  to 
Count  Ignatieff,  the  author  of  the  May  laws, 
he  made  this  laconic  answer:  “The  Western 
borders  are  open  to  you  Jews.”  Up  to  this 
time  Russia  had  had  vigorous  laws  prohibit¬ 
ing  emigration;  but  now  she  began  to  relax 
these  laws.  One  privilege  was  extended  to  the 
Jews  that  was  withheld  from  all  other  deni¬ 
zens  of  the  Czar’s  dominion:  they  were  not 
only  permitted  but  invited  to  leave  the  country. 
Such  was  the  original  impetus  of  the  move¬ 
ment  that,  in  forty  years,  increased  the  Jew¬ 
ish  population  of  the  United  States  from 
200,000  to  3,000,000. 


CHAPTER  II 


DO  THE  JEWS  DOMINATE  AMERICAN  FINANCE? 

I 

THE  progress  which  the  Jews  are  making 
in  the  economic  life  of  the  United  States 
is  generally  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  con¬ 
spicuous  portents  of  the  times.  The  phrases 
that  are  not  infrequently  used  to  describe 
this  progress — the  “menace”  of  the  Jew,  the 
“Jewish  peril,”  the  “Judaization”  of  America 
— best  portray  the  emotions  which  it  arouses 
in  certain  quarters.  It  is  the  ambition  of  the 
Jewish  race,  we  are  told,  to  “dominate”  the 
United  States.  This  is  the  ultimate  achieve¬ 
ment  in  a  widespread  Jewish  plot  to  conquer 
modern  civilization,  to  destroy  its  Christian 
quality,  to  heap  up  its  accumulated  riches  all 
to  the  glory  of  Israel.  Probably  there  is  no 
more  astounding  fact  in  modern  life  than  the 
seriousness  with  which  certain  people  have 
accepted  a  curious  document  which  has  been 


44 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  45 

widely  circulated  in  all  European  countries 
and  the  United  States  in  the  last  four  or  five 
years.  This  is  known  as  “The  Protocols  of 
the  Elders  of  Zion.”  It  purports  to  describe 
a  campaign  waged  by  the  Jews  with  diabolical 
persistence  for  the  destruction  of  modern  civi¬ 
lization  and  the  erection  of  a  universal  Jewish 
state  on  the  ruins.  If  one  accepts  this  docu¬ 
ment  as  authentic,  he  must  believe  that  the 
Jews,  for  several  centuries,  have  been  working 
with  supreme  ability  and  supreme  malevolence 
to  wreck  all  Christian  nations,  to  set  them  at 
cross  purposes  with  one  another,  to  start  wars, 
revolutions,  riots,  strikes,  financial  panics — to 
create  disorder  everywhere,  all  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  overturning  the  present  system  of  so¬ 
ciety.  They  started  the  French  Revolution, 
all  the  wars  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  the  re¬ 
cently  ended  World  War;  their  supreme  ac¬ 
complishment,  a  foretaste  of  the  chaos  and  the 
ruin  that  they  plan  to  precipitate  in  every 
civilized  country,  is  the  Bolshevist  regime  in 
Russia.  Naturally  in  this  plan  of  mighty 
conquest  the  United  States  represents  an  ulti¬ 
mate  goal.  The  fact  that  there  are  3,000,000 
Jews  in  this  country,  that  they  “control”  or 
“dominate”  so  many  departments  of  American 


46  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

life,  is  hailed  as  proof  that  this  century-old 
conspiracy  is  rapidly  achieving  success. 

Certainly  this  is  a  scheme  so  magnificent  in 
its  iniquity  that  it  is  in  itself  almost  a  compli¬ 
ment  to  any  racial  group  to  which  it  is  at¬ 
tributed,  especially  one  so  numerically  infer¬ 
ior  and  so  generally  ostracized  as  the  Jews ;  not 
less  astonishing  than  the  plot  itself  is  the  fact 
that  so  many  normally  level-headed  people  be¬ 
lieve  it.  That  Henry  Ford  should  base  his 
anti-Jewish  campaign  upon  these  “Protocols” 
is  perhaps  not  surprising;  but  that  such  organs 
of  public  opinion  as  the  London  Morning 
Post  and  the  London  Spectator  should  take 
them  seriously  is  much  more  significant. 
What,  then,  is  the  truth,  so  far  as  the  United 
States  is  concerned?  Are  the  American  peo¬ 
ple  being  “Judaized”?  First  of  all,  are 
American  business  and  finance  rapidly  pass¬ 
ing  into  the  hands  of  the  sons  of  Abraham? 

This  conspiracy  of  the  “Elders  of  Zion”  is 
the  most  startling  discovery  of  the  Anti- 
Semite,  yet  its  conception  involves  a  quality 
which  the  anti-Semitic  writers  themselves 
have  always  denied  the  Jews.  “The  Jew,” 
says  the  historian  Mommsen,  “unlike  the  Oc¬ 
cidental,  has  not  received  the  gift  of  political 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  47 

organization”;  and  it  is  not  only  in  matters 
national  and  political  that  this  same  failing  is 
apparent.  If  there  is  one  thing  that  the  Jews 
have  proved  in  their  age-long  wandering  over 
the  face  of  the  earth,  it  is  that  they  lack  the 
power  of  cooperation.  They  occupy  their 
present  isolated  position,  not  because  they 
have  been  persecuted  by  the  Christians,  but 
because  they  lack  that  aptitude  for  coherence 
and  organization  whose  ultimate  expression  is 
nationality.  This  nomadic  tendency  of  Israel 
is  nothing  new.  It  is  not  even  modern.  It 
does  not  date  from  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  in 
70  A.  D.,  as  most  people  suppose;  the  Jewish 
proclivity  for  circulating  among  other  un¬ 
friendly  peoples  was  as  much  a  feature  of  the 
ancient  world  as  it  is  of  the  present  one.  The 
city  of  Rome,  in  the  mixture  of  its  peoples, 
filled  a  place  in  ancient  times  not  unlike  that 
occupied  by  the  New  York  of  the  present  day; 
and  Jews  were  proportionately  almost  as  com¬ 
mon  along  the  Tiber  in  the  days  of  Julius 
Caesar  as  they  are  along  the  Hudson  in  the 
days  of  Warren  G.  Harding.  “This  remark¬ 
able  people” — I  am  again  quoting  Mommsen 
— “yielding  and  yet  tenacious,  was  in  the  an¬ 
cient  as  in  the  modern  world  everywhere  and 


48  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

nowhere  at  home,  and  everywhere  and  no¬ 
where  powerful.  The  successors  of  David  and 
Solomon  were  of  hardly  more  significance  for 
the  Jews  of  that  age  than  Jerusalem  for  those 
of  the  present  day;  the  nation  furnished  doubt¬ 
less  for  its  religious  and  intellectual  unity  a 
visible  rally-point  in  the  petty  kingdom  of 
Jerusalem,  but  the  nation  itself  consisted  not 
merely  of  the  subjects  of  the  Hasmonaeans,  but 
of  the  innumerable  bodies  of  Jews  scattered 
through  the  whole  Parthian  and  Roman 
empire  .  .  .  How  numerous  even  in 

Rome  the  Jewish  population  was  already  be¬ 
fore  Caesar’s  time,  and  how  closely  the  Jews 
even  then  kept  together  as  fellow  countrymen, 
is  shown  by  the  remark  of  an  author  of  this 
period,  that  it  was  dangerous  for  a  governor 
to  offend  the  Jews  in  his  province,  because  he 
might  then  certainly  reckon  on  being  hissed 
after  his  return  by  the  populace  of  the  cap¬ 
ital.”  And  the  great  historian  adds  another 
important  detail.  The  usual  explanation  for 
the  trading  and  commercial  propensities  of 
the  Jew  and  his  aversion  to  agriculture,  is 
that  the  laws  of  the  Christian  world  have 
prevented  him  from  owning  land  and  thus 
have  forced  him  into  business  activities.  Yet, 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  49 

according  to  Mommsen,  the  Jew  of  Rome 
in  the  day  of  Julius  Cassar  was  precisely  like 
the  Jew  of  modern  times;  he  was  scattered  in 
all  parts  of  the  Roman  world,  and,  as  to-day,  he 
was  a  city  dweller  and  a  trader.  The  individ¬ 
ualistic  trading  instinct  of  the  Jew  is  not  the 
result  of  fortuitous  circumstances;  it  is  in¬ 
herent  in  the  very  germ-plasm  of  the  race. 

Evidently  this  absence  of  national  organi¬ 
zation,  this  inability  to  cooperate  for  the 
achievement  of  a  unified  purpose,  is  a  deep- 
lying  racial  trait.  It  explains  why  the  Jews 
lost  their  standing  as  a  nation  and  why  they 
have  never  regained  it.  Read  the  story  of  the 
fall  of  Jerusalem,  as  painted  by  the  great  Eng¬ 
lish  historian  of  the  Jews,  Dean  Milman. 
Why  did  Jerusalem  succumb?  Not  neces¬ 
sarily  because  Titus  had  greater  military 
strength,  but  because  the  Jews  themselves 
were  divided.  While  the  siege  was  going  on, 
and  all  the  resources  of  the  Jews  were  needed 
to  resist  the  exterior  enemy,  three  factions 
within  the  city  were  engaged  in  brawls  and 
riots,  massacring  one  another  in  most  horrible 
fashion.  Though  this  is  an  extreme  illustra¬ 
tion,  the  fact  remains  that  the  most  conspicu¬ 
ous  trait  of  the  Jew  is  an  intense  individual- 


50  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ism.  Each  man  is  an  entity  in  himself;  the 
faculty  of  association,  even  in  matters  that  con¬ 
cern  his  own  race  and  religion,  does  not  ap¬ 
pear  to  be  an  Hebraic  quality. 

The  million  and  a  half  Jews  who  comprise 
the  Jewish  population  of  New  York  City  are 
standing  illustrations  of  this  truth.  Their 
intense  individualism  regulates  practically 
every  phase  of  their  daily  existence.  From 
this  point  of  view  there  is  no  sight  more  signif¬ 
icant  than  that  of  Fifth  Avenue,  south  of 
Thirty-Second  Street,  at  the  noon  hour,  when 
the  Jewish  workers  in  the  clothing  factories, 
many  thousands  strong,  pour  into  this  great 
thoroughfare.  It  is  one  of  the  New  York 
sights  that  most  astonishes  the  visitor.  New 
York  has  plenty  of  other  crowds,  but  this  one 
differs  from  the  others.  The  aggregation 
moves  differently  from  most  human  groups;  it 
advances  more  slowly;  there  is  a  conspicuous 
lack  of  order;  the  pavement  seems  full  of  ob¬ 
structions  ;  little  assemblages  stand  frequently 
in  the  middle  of  the  throng,  forcing  the  pedes¬ 
trian  to  make  detours  around  them.  Most 
American  crowds  divide  into  two  files,  going 
in  opposite  directions,  an  instinctive  arrange¬ 
ment  that  produces  order  and  comfort;  but 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  51 

this  is  not  invariably  the  case  with  these 
throngs  of  Jewish  clothing  workers.  Each 
person  seems  to  be  for  himself;  he  takes  the 
right  side,  the  left  side,  or  the  middle,  irre¬ 
spective  of  any  rules  of  the  road;  he  fre¬ 
quently  travels  in  the  street;  the  result  is  an 
impression  of  a  slow-moving,  rather  aimless 
horde,  without  precision  and  without  the 
slightest  regard  for  cooperation.  The  scene 
is  typical  of  the  Jewish  community  as  a 
whole.  It  really  consists  of  a  mass  of  inco¬ 
herent  human  particles,  each  revolving  in  his 
own  orbit. 

This  complaint  constantly  runs  through  all 
the  Jewish  literature  produced  in  New  York. 
The  difficulty  of  making  their  people  cooper¬ 
ate  for  Jewish  ends,  even  in  so  inspiring  a 
cause  as  Zionism,  is  the  perpetual  despair  of 
the  leaders  of  their  race.  The  disregard  with 
which  the  mass  of  New  York  Jews  treat  their 
own  religion  is  the  unending  complaint  of  the 
rabbis.  The  problem  of  the  unchurched  is 
one  of  the  pressing  issues  of  Protestantism, 
and,  to  a  lesser  degree,  of  Catholicism,  but 
even  more  acute  is  the  Jewish  problem  of  the 
unsynagogued.  The  synagogue  itself  is  per¬ 
haps  the  most  outstanding  illustration  of  Jew- 


52  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ish  individualism.  There  are  700  or  800  syna¬ 
gogues  in  Greater  New  York,  but  each  one  is 
a  separate  group,  having  absolutely  no  rela¬ 
tion  with  the  others.  The  Jewish  religion  is 
the  only  one  in  the  United  States  which  exists 
without  an  organization;  there  are  no  Jewish 
bishops,  or  presbyters,  or  conferences,  or  con¬ 
vocations;  all  attempts  to  create  a  Grand 
Rabbi,  a  functionary  who  would  have  a  kind 
of  pope-like  supervision  over  all  the  Jewish 
congregations,  have  failed.  In  politics  the 
same  condition  prevails.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  the  “Jewish  vote”;  Jews  notoriously 
vote  independently — be  it  said  to  their  credit; 
a  Jewish  district  that  goes  Republican  this 
year  may  go  Democratic  the  next.  If  the 
Jews  of  New  York  acted  as  a  political  unit, 
they  could  easily  control  the  city  and  capture 
many  of  the  offices;  yet  that  trait  which  the 
politicians  regard  as  their  “instability”  all  but 
robs  them  of  political  influence.  Though  the 
Jews  are  far  more  numerous  than  the  Irish, 
there  are  only  five  or  six  Jewish  district  lead¬ 
ers  out  of  thirty-two  in  Tammany  Hall;  the 
Irish  still  control  this  organization.  The 
Jews  cannot  be  depended  on  to  vote  even  for 
members  of  their  own  race;  they  could  easily 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  53 

have  elected  Morris  Hillquit  mayor  in  1917, 
and,  had  they  manifested  that  clannishness  in 
politics  which  their  critics  regard  as  a  Jewish 
quality,  they  would  certainly  have  done  so; 
instead,  the  masses  threw  their  support  to  the 
Irish  candidate  of  Tammany  Hall,  John  F. 
Hylan.  The  fact  that  the  only  large  com¬ 
pact  vote  obtained  by  Mr.  Hillquit  was  in 
the  Jewish  sections  is  another  phase  of  the 
Jewish  question  which  will  be  discussed  in  a 
subsequent  chapter. 

The  Jewish  labour  leaders  are  always  com¬ 
plaining  of  the  unresponsiveness  of  their  peo¬ 
ple.  The  fact  that  almost  every  barrel  orator 
operating  in  New  York  streets  is  a  recent 
importation  from  Russia,  creates  the  impres¬ 
sion  that  the  Jews  are  enthusiastic  devotees  of 
trade  unionism ;  yet  the  truth  is  quite  the  other 
way.  That  they  are  persistent  “joiners”  and 
that,  at  times  of  crisis,  they  do  engage  in  great 
and  tumultuous  strikes,  is  true;  yet  it  is  also 
true  that  they  hold  their  allegiance  lightly, 
that  they  backslide  as  soon  as  the  particular 
strike  is  over,  and  that  they  are  most  unde¬ 
pendable  as  dues  payers.  The  explanation  is 
that  trade  unionism  demands  organization, 
and  that  the  power  of  organization  is  not  a 


54  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

characteristic  of  this  individualistic  race.  It 
is  just  as  significant  that  stocks  and  bonds  are 
difficult  to  sell  in  the  New  York  Jewish 
quarter.  The  Russian  immigrant  cannot 
understand  that  a  piece  of  paper  can  possibly 
be  property.  Stocks  and  bonds  imply  joint 
ownership,  cooperation,  organization,  where¬ 
as  the  Jewish  conception  of  property  is  indi¬ 
vidualistic.  Diamonds  that  he  can  carry  in 
his  pocket,  a  tenement  house  that  he  can  own 
and  manage  himself,  a  push-cart  that  his  arms 
can  propel  through  the  streets,  a  small  shop 
that  he  can  operate  to  his  own  personal  profit, 
even  a  great  bank  in  which  the  system  of  con¬ 
trol  is  either  individual  or  a  select  partner¬ 
ship — these  are  the  forms  of  business  enter¬ 
prise  in  which  the  Jewish  genius  best  expresses 
itself.  But  the  mere  possession  of  a  scrap  of 
paper  that  makes  the  Jew  a  partner  with  sev¬ 
eral  thousand  others,  and  this  in  a  form  of 
property — such  as  a  railroad,  a  steel  mill,  a 
great  factory — which  he  never  sees,  and  which 
he  cannot  manage  exclusively  himself,  fails 
to  arouse  his  interest.  In  business,  as  in  pol¬ 
itics,  in  religion,  and  in  social  activities,  the 
Jew  is  thus  primarily  an  individualist.  It  is 
the  one  clear  and  unfailing  quality  of  an 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  55 

otherwise  complex  character.  Perhaps  the 
Jew’s  constitutional  restlessness  under  re¬ 
straint,  his  determination  to  strike  out  for  him¬ 
self,  his  unwillingness  to  accept  the  station  in 
which  circumstances  have  placed  him,  explain 
this  independence;  at  any  rate,  the  quality  is 
an  active  one  and  is  of  the  utmost  importance 
in  considering  the  place  which  the  Jew  oc¬ 
cupies  in  American  life.  In  itself  it  shows 
that  the  idea  that  the  Jew  is  organized  in  a 
mighty  secret  plot  having  ramifications  in  all 
parts  of  the  world  for  the  undermining  of 
Christian  civilization,  is  about  the  most  gro¬ 
tesque  manifestation  of  that  hysteria  which  is 
part  of  the  psychosis  which  we  owe  to  the 
World  War. 


II 

Another  point  which  must  be  subjected  to 
analysis  is  the  prevalent  belief  in  the  supe¬ 
riority  of  the  Jewish  mind.  Americans  are 
constantly  being  informed  that  the  Jewish 
school  child  is  more  intelligent  than  is  the 
child  of  any  of  the  other  races  making  up  the 
American  population.  The  bitterest  enemies 
of  the  Jews  attribute  to  them  a  keenness  of 
intellect,  a  talent  for  success,  not  only  in  busi- 


56  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ness  and  finance,  but  in  the  arts,  far  above  that 
met  with  in  Gentiles;  indeed,  that  is  one  of 
the  stock  grievances  against  the  race.  So 
universal  is  this  impression  that  it  may  seem 
a  little  absurd  to  submit  it  to  investigation. 
Yet,  after  all,  is  it  true?  In  several  thousand 
years  of  history,  in  what  respect  have  the  Jews 
demonstrated  greater  mental  power  than  the 
Gentiles  among  whom  they  have  lived? 
Possibly  the  judgment  of  mankind  has 
awarded  them  the  priority  in  religious  leader¬ 
ship,  instancing  the  prophets  from  Abraham 
to  Jesus  Christ;  yet  in  the  arts  and  mechanisms 
that  make  up  what  we  call  modern  civilization 
it  is  not  at  all  clear  that  the  Jews  have  reached 
a  higher  level  than  the  European  races.  If 
we  examine  from  this  point  of  view  the  sev¬ 
eral  phases  of  progress,  one  fact  seems  to 
stand  out  conspicuously.  In  practically  all 
of  them  the  Jews  have  shown  talent  of  a  high 
order;  in  practically  none  of  them  have  they 
demonstrated  preeminent  genius.  In  music, 
in  poetry,  statesmanship,  and  science  the  Jews 
can  exhibit  several  leaders  of  unusual  ability; 
the  few  lofty  mountain  tops  that  emblazon 
that  lonely  quality  known  as  genius  are  held 
by  Gentiles.  The  Jews  have  great  powers 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  57 

of  imitation;  they  can  develop  the  ideas  and 
principles  of  others;  the  mighty  gift  of  crea¬ 
tion,  however,  they  possess  only  in  a  mod¬ 
erate  degree. 

Wagner,  in  his  essay  on  “The  Jews  and 
Music,”  denies  them  creative  power  in  this 
art.  They  have  lesser  lights — a  Mendelssohn, 
a  Meyerbeer,  an  Offenbach;  they  have  no 
Beethoven,  no  Mozart,  or — he  might  have 
added — no  Wagner.  In  poetry  they  have  a 
Heine,  but  no  Milton,  no  Byron,  no  Keats,  no 
Wordsworth.  In  the  drama  they  possess  sev¬ 
eral  figures  of  minor  importance,  but  where  is 
the  Jewish  Shakespeare  or  Moliere  or 
Schiller?  In  statesmanship  they  have  a  Dis¬ 
raeli,  but  no  Cromwell  or  Pitt  or  Washington 
or  Lincoln.  What  Jewish  orator  is  there  to 
put  in  the  same  class  with  Burke  or  Fox  or 
Sheridan  or  Webster?  What  Jewish  jurist 
ranks  with  Blackstone,  Lord  Mansfield,  or 
John  Marshall?  In  philosophy  indeed  the 
Jews  do  possess  one  man  of  the  very  first 
rank,  Spinoza,  and  that  exception  to  the  gen¬ 
eralization  made  above  must  be  noted;  but  in 
science  is  there  any  Jewish  name  to  put  beside 
Copernicus  or  La  Place  or  Galileo  or  Newton 
or  Darwin — unless,  indeed,  the  recent  work 


58  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

of  Einstein  may  ultimately  include  him  in 
these  exalted  ranks?  Even  in  that  branch  in 
which  the  Jews  have  been  especially  active 
and  in  which  they  have  demonstrated  great 
ability,  medicine  and  surgery,  their  names  by 
no  means  occupy  the  first  place.  Run  over 
the  list  of  the  great  medical  discoveries  of 
the  last  three  centuries  from  that  of  the  circu¬ 
lation  of  the  blood  to  that  of  bacteriology;  the 
most  impressive  fact  is  that  the  vast  majority 
of  the  preeminent  brains  are  Gentiles.  Even 
in  the  Nineteenth  and  Twentieth  Centuries, 
when  Jewish  scholarship  in  this  country  and 
in  Europe  has  had  free  scope,  the  great  accom¬ 
plishments  have  been  made  by  non-Jews. 
Probably  the  greatest  medical  achievements  of 
modern  times  were  the  discovery  of  vaccina¬ 
tion,  of  anaesthetics,  and  of  bacteriology;  the 
first  was  English,  the  second  American,  the 
third  French.  Indeed  it  would  probably  be 
possible  to  mention  half-a-dozen  American 
achievements — such  as  anaesthetics,  ovari¬ 
otomy,  Marion  Sims’s  work  in  gynecology,  Dr. 
Beaumont’s  discovery  of  the  laws  of  digestion, 
Dr.  Holmes’s  discovery  of  the  contagious¬ 
ness  of  child-bed  fever,  Dr.  Walter  Reed’s 
work  in  yellow  fever — to  which  Jewish  med- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  59 

ical  science  can  present  few  parallels.  In 
this  department,  as  in  the  arts,  the  Jewish 
mind  lacks  the  great  faculty  of  creation;  Jew¬ 
ish  medical  scientists,  such  as  MetchnikofF, 
Ehrlich,  and  Wasserman,  have  important 
achievements  to  their  credit,  but  their  work 
consists  in  elaborating  principles  discovered 
by  other  men;  the  work  of  the  three  mention¬ 
ed,  for  example,  is  all  based  upon  the  orig¬ 
inal  investigations  of  Pasteur.  Nor  is  it  any 
sufficient  answer  to  point  to  the  comparatively 
small  number  of  Jews,  for  one  of  the  most 
certain  teachings  of  history  is  that  the  genius 
of  a  people,  and  the  proportion  of  great  men 
it  produces,  has  no  relation  to  its  numbers. 
The  genius  of  the  English  people  had  its 
finest  flowering  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth,  when 
the  population  of  the  little  island  was  less 
than  two  million.  The  genius  of  the  Greeks 
reached  its  most  eloquent  expression  in  the 
days  of  Pericles  when  the  population  was  only 
a  few  hundred  thousand.  The  small  numbers 
of  the  Jews  as  compared  with  Gentiles  is 
therefore  no  reason  why  they  should  not  have 
produced  a  great  array  of  geniuses  of  the  first 
class  if,  as  we  have  been  taught  to  believe,  we 
are  dealing  with  a  race  of  supermen. 


6o  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

Thus  the  prevailing  idea  that  the  Jewish 
mind  is  superior  to  the  Gentile  is  disproved  by 
the  most  cursory  examination  of  human 
achievement,  though  that  it  is  quick,  nimble, 
talented,  sometimes  to  an  astonishing  degree, 
is  apparent.  The  records  of  Jewish  and 
“American”  children — the  latter  term  is  not 
entirely  satisfactory,  yet  it  does  convey  a 
definite  classification — in  the  New  York  pub¬ 
lic  schools  brings  out  the  same  point.  Here 
again  we  at  once  come  into  conflict  with  a  con¬ 
viction  which  is  as  general  as  it  is  untrue. 
That  Jewish  children  are  superior  mentally 
to  the  other  breeds  is  usually  accepted,  even 
by  Gentile  writers,  as  a  demonstrated  fact. 
Yet  there  is  no  evidence  substantiating  this  be¬ 
lief.  That  Jewish  children  are  more  indus¬ 
trious,  that  they  will  work  six  hours  at  their 
studies  where  “American”  children  work  two 
or  three,  and  that  they  are  therefore  likely  to 
carry  off  a  disproportionate  share  of  the 
prizes,  does  seem  to  be  true — though  this  fact, 
also,  is  merely  an  impression,  and  has  not  been 
submitted  to  examination ;  but  that  they  have 
better  minds,  that  their  mental  processes  are 
more  rapid  and  more  accurate,  that  they  are 
capable  of  greater  intellectual  achievements, 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  61 

is  not  believed  by  those  who  come  daily  into 
contact  with  them.  I  have  myself  discussed 
this  question  with  Jewish  teachers  in  the  New 
York  public  schools.  They  do  believe  that 
the  Jewish  mind  is  better  than  that  of  the 
southern  Italian  and  other  immigrating  races, 
but  they  at  once  deny  that  it  is  superior  to  that 
of  the  native  “American”  stock.  The  recently 
conducted  “psychological  tests”  seem  to  en¬ 
dorse  this  statement.  If  we  examine  the  rec¬ 
ords  of  a  public  school,  where  the  population 
is  overwhelmingly  Jewish,  and  of  another 
where  the  native  American  names  are  very 
numerous,  any  idea  that  the  Jewish  intellect 
is  superior  to  that  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  at  once 
disappears.  The  test  chiefly  valuable  from 
this  point  of  view  is  the  one  known  as  “I.  Q.” 
— the  “intelligence  quotient” — which  regis¬ 
ters  the  rapidity  and  accuracy  of  the  child’s 
mental  operations.  The  records  of  the  Jew¬ 
ish  children  show  the  widest  divergences.  A 
great  many,  of  course,  evidence  mental  qual¬ 
ities  above  the  normal;  but  there  are  also  a 
large  number  whose  mental  qualities  are  sub¬ 
normal.  On  the  whole,  the  record  is  a  firmly 
good  one.  (Incidentally,  it  may  be  remarked 
that  whenever  an  Italian  name  is  noted, 


62  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

the  type  of  mind  revealed  is  usually  be¬ 
low  par.)  Excellent  as  the  Jewish  intelli¬ 
gence  appears,  it  is  no  better  than  that  of  the 
children  who  bear  such  names  as  “Anderson,” 
“Andrews,”  “Robinson,”  and  the  like;  the  im¬ 
pression  left  after  looking  over  several  hun¬ 
dred  names  is  that  the  “Intelligence  Quo¬ 
tient”  of  these  latter  children  is  uniformly  on 
a  considerably  higher  level  than  the  Jewish. 

Ill 

It  seems  fair  to  say  that  the  Jewish  mind 
lacks  two  qualities — the  creative  faculty  and 
the  ability  to  organize  or  to  cooperate.  In 
estimating  the  progress  of  the  Jews  in  the 
United  States,  these  facts  are  of  the  utmost 
consequence,  for  these  are  the  qualities  in 
which  Americans,  at  least  in  their  industrial 
and  economic  development,  are  preeminent. 
Certainly  the  prime  attribute  of  American 
business  and  finance  has  been  its  genius  for 
organization.  Individualism  passed  out  of 
American  enterprise  a  generation  ago.  Even 
the  co-partnership,  as  a  method  of  conducting 
business,  ceased  to  be  important  soon  after 
the  Civil  War.  The  stock  company  and  the 
corporation  succeeded  it;  then  came  the  trust, 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  63 

the  combination  of  subsidiary  corporations, 
with  its  hundreds  of  millions  of  securities,  its 
great  boards  of  directors,  its  highly  efficient 
and  specialized  executive  staffs.  The  story 
of  American  industry  is  a  long  chronicle  of 
trusts,  combinations,  holding  companies,  and 
interlocking  directorates;  the  history  of 
American  railroads  also  has  represented  the 
linking  of  one  railroad  to  another,  the  crea¬ 
tion  of  mighty  trunk  systems  out  of  thousands 
of  distinct,  uncoordinated  lines;  similarly, 
American  banking  and  finance  centres  in 
vast  aggregations  of  capital,  under  corpora¬ 
tion  control.  This  tendency  to  concentration 
has  perhaps  led  to  glaring  abuses;  it  has  cer¬ 
tainly  aroused  much  popular  antagonism;  but 
it  at  least  brings  into  striking  emphasis  the 
fact  that  American  enterprise  demands  above 
all  the  quality  of  team  play.  Solitary  indi¬ 
vidualistic  undertakings  make  little  progress; 
everything  is  the  product  of  energetic  leader¬ 
ship  working  through  organization. 

American  enterprise  has  also  possessed 
another  quality;  it  has  been  preeminently 
creative.  A  Chicago  professor  once  caused 
international  laughter  by  his  comparison  of 
Shakespeare  and  Rockefeller;  both,  he  de- 


64  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

dared,  were  great  creative  artists;  both  had 
the  imaginative  instinct  to  that  degree  that 
constitutes  genius;  one  happened  to  express 
himself  in  writing  plays,  the  other  in  develop- 
ing  a  great  world-wide  industry.  Perhaps  the 
illustration  was  a  little  unfortunate,  yet  there 
is  in  the  idea  a  certain  amount  of  truth. 
Arnold  Bennett  described  the  American  tele¬ 
phone  system  as  the  most  “poetic”  achieve¬ 
ment  of  the  United  States.  The  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  American  telephone  from  a 
mere  mechanical  toy  into  an  agency  that 
reaches  practically  every  American  house  and 
farmhouse  and  puts  practically  every  person 
in  the  United  States  into  immediate  speaking 
touch  with  every  other  person ;  the  concentra¬ 
tion  of  a  thousand  agencies,  manufacturing, 
technical,  executive,  under  a  single  head,  for 
the  accomplishment  of  this  one  purpose;  this 
kind  of  an  achievement  is  something  new  in 
the  history  of  the  human  race;  it  really  rep¬ 
resents  the  creative  faculty  working  in  an 
entirely  new  field.  The  story  of  steel — the 
thousands  of  new  uses  to  which  it  has  been 
put,  the  most  daring  of  which,  perhaps,  is 
the  erection  of  many-storied  buildings — 
enforces  the  same  point.  Until  the  inven- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  65 

tion  of  American  farm  machinery,  agricul¬ 
tural  methods  had  changed  little  from  the 
days  of  the  Babylonians;  the  sickles  used  by 
our  great  grandfathers  differed  little  from 
those  that  are  dug  up  in  Etruscan  tombs.  The 
American  adoption  of  machinery  to  the  proc¬ 
esses  of  farming,  the  energy  with  which 
Americans  have  carried  these  improvements 
into  every  corner  of  the  world  so  that  Ameri¬ 
can  harvesters  are  now  almost  as  commonly 
met  with  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile  and  the 
Ganges  as  along  the  borders  of  the  Missouri 
and  the  Platte;  the  tremendous  consequences, 
social,  political,  and  economic,  of  this  devel¬ 
opment — there  is  only  one  word  for  this  sort 
of  thing:  it  is  creative  genius  applied  to  indus¬ 
try.  The  imagination  that  could  conceive  and 
carry  out  the  idea  of  transforming  the  automo¬ 
bile  from  the  luxury  of  the  rich  into  an  article 
of  comfort  and  necessity  of  the  everyday  citi¬ 
zen,  clearly  belongs  in  the  same  class.  For 
ages  petroleum  had  lain  unused  in  millions 
of  pools  under  the  earth’s  surface;  the  skill 
that  brought  this  to  the  light  of  day,  that 
pumped  it  thousands  of  miles  in  pipe  lines, 
that  with  it  made  millions  of  homes  almost 
as  light  at  night  as  at  noonday,  and  that  trans- 


66  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

formed  it  into  so  many  uses  that  “oil”  is  now 
recognized  as  almost  the  most  important  ele¬ 
ment  in  world  politics;  this  is  creative  genius 
of  a  different  kind  than  that  which  produces 
a  “Hamlet”  and  a  “Macbeth,”  yet  it  is  crea¬ 
tive  genius  all  the  same. 

It  at  once  becomes  apparent  that  the  Rus¬ 
sian  Jew,  in  transferring  himself  from  eastern 
Europe  to  the  United  States,  came  into 
contact  with  a  kind  of  competition  which  he 
had  never  before  encountered  in  his  more 
than  two  thousand  years  of  wanderings.  He 
met  both  a  new  kind  of  people  and  entirely 
new  surroundings.  He  came  from  a  country 
where  trade  and  industry  had  for  centuries 
been  looked  down  upon  as  degrading  oc¬ 
cupations,  unworthy  of  gentlemen;  he  came 
to  a  country  where  these  had  for  several  gene¬ 
rations  engaged  the  energies  of  many  of  its 
finest  brains.  His  old  home  had  progressed 
not  far  beyond  the  mediaeval  stage;  90  per 
cent,  of  its  population  were  ignorant,  illiterate 
peasants  engaged  in  agriculture;  in  his  new 
home  the  prevailing  note  was  modernity; 
education  was  universal;  equality  of  oppor¬ 
tunity  was  almost  the  national  religion;  the 
industrial  centres  contained  a  great  artisan 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  67 

class  famous  for  its  skill  and  its  energy; 
the  farming  sections  supported  an  aggregate 
of  nearly  7,000,000  landholders,  who,  in  intel¬ 
ligence,  education,  self-respect,  and  all  that 
goes  to  make  energetic,  upstanding  citizen¬ 
ship,  formed  an  amazing  contrast  to  the  brut¬ 
ish,  dull-witted  mujik  who  had  for  generations 
been  the  Jews’  conception  of  a  husbandman. 
Perhaps  the  greatest  difference  in  the  Old 
World  and  the  New  World  environment  was 
the  fact  that  Russia,  Austria,  and  Rumania 
had  only  two  social  classes,  the  nobility  and 
the  peasantry,  divided  by  an  all  but  impene¬ 
trable  wall,  while  the  bulk  of  the  American 
people  were  composed  of  a  vast  middle  class, 
which  found  readily  accessible  the  path  of 
transition  into  the  ranks  of  the  educated  and 
the  prosperous.  Above  all,  however,  was  the 
difference  in  the  racial  stock — in  the  germ- 
plasm  from  which  the  Slavic  and  American 
peoples  had  developed.  The  American  popu¬ 
lation  had  come  from  northwestern  Europe, 
the  part  of  the  world  which  has  unmistakably 
led  in  modern  progress,  especially  in  commer¬ 
cial  and  industrial  progress.  Overwhelmingly 
its  largest  element  had  been  derived  from  Eng¬ 
land,  Scotland,  and  Wales;  clearly,  therefore, 


68  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

in  native  talent  and  energy  the  Jew  was  to  pit 
himself  against  a  higher  type  of  mind  than 
had  for  centuries  tested  his  qualities  in  his 
wanderings  through  Spain,  the  Levant,  east¬ 
ern  Germany,  Poland,  Austria,  and  Russia. 
If,  as  the  anti-Semitic  writers  assert,  the  Jew 
is  essentially  an  exploiter  of  inferior  peoples, 
a  person  who  attaches  himself  to  the  body  of 
an  industrious  people  and,  by  superior  persist¬ 
ence  and  cunning,  extracts  the  profit  of  its  toil, 
it  is  quite  apparent  that  this  extremely  intelli¬ 
gent  American  population  would  be  more 
difficult  to  “exploit”  than  the  sodden  Euro¬ 
pean  peasantry.  When  it  comes  to  shrewd 
trading  the  Yankee  himself  is  no  despicable 
antagonist.  Before  he  is  anything  else  he  is  a 
business  man,  and,  at  a  matching  of  business 
talents,  even  so  capable  a  person  as  a  Jew 
needs  to  sharpen  his  wits.  A  well-known 
Jewish  lawyer,  once  retained  as  an  associate 
in  an  important  case  by  Joseph  H.  Choate, 
was  appalled  at  the  size  of  the  check  which 
Mr.  Choate  sent  him — his  share  of  an  ex¬ 
tremely  generous  fee.  “Oh  Joseph,  Joseph,” 
he  wrote  in  acknowledgment,  “almost  thou 
persuadest  me  to  become  a  Christian!” 

It  is  therefore  perhaps  not  surprising  that 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  69 

the  Jew  has  made  no  astonishing  economic 
progress  in  this  country.  Probably  this  state¬ 
ment  itself  will  at  once  cause  a  general  demur¬ 
rer.  The  success  of  the  Jew  has  become 
almost  a  fixed  idea.  That  he  turns  to  gold 
whatever  he  touches;  that  he  rapidly  gains 
possession  of  financial  power;  that  he  “domi¬ 
nates”  business  and  finance ;  that  he  practises  a 
kind  of  competition  which  other  races  can¬ 
not  meet;  that  for  these  reasons  his  pres¬ 
ence  is  a  standing  “menace”  to  American  life 
— these  beliefs  have  gained  so  firm  a  foot¬ 
hold  in  the  popular  mind  that  it  is  per¬ 
haps  useless  to  subject  them  to  examination. 
Yet  the  so-called  “dominance”  of  the  Jew 
is  perhaps  the  strangest  illusion  abroad  at 
the  present  time.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  it 
ever  originated.  Mr.  Henry  Ford  has  spent 
a  fortune  in  his  recent  investigation  of  the 
Jewish  problem;  his  theme  has  been  this 
“Jewish  control”  of  America’s  wealth.  Yet 
the  most  hasty  survey  of  the  American  scene 
demonstrates  the  absurdity  of  this  idea.  The 
actual  wonder  is  not  that  the  Jew  has  ac¬ 
complished  so  much  in  the  United  States  but 
that  he  has  really  accomplished  so  little. 

The  one  aptitude  which  is  unanimously  at- 


70  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

tributed  to  the  Jews  is  a  genius  for  banking 
and  finance.  He  has  always  been  a  money¬ 
lender;  the  idea  that  this  is  an  occupation  to 
which  he  was  forced  by  Christian  persecution 
is,  as  already  shown,  not  well  founded;  from 
his  earliest  appearance  the  Jew  has  shown 
great  talents  as  a  banker.  What  then  is  his 
position  in  American  finance?  The  great 
financial  power  of  the  United  States  rests  with 
the  national  banks,  the  trust  companies,  the 
savings  banks,  the  life  insurance  companies, 
and  other  mighty  fiduciary  institutions  of  like 
character.  Into  these  huge  receptacles  the 
liquid  capital  of  the  American  people  steadily 
pours  in  an  unending  stream.  The  national 
banks  have  deposits  of  $15,500,000,000,  the 
trust  companies,  of  $10,000,000,000,  the  sav¬ 
ings  banks  hold  $26,000,000,000.  Here  is  an 
aggregate  of  $51,500,000,000;  these  billions 
of  dollars  comprise  what  the  common  man  re¬ 
gards  as  “money”;  they  are  cash  resources 
which  are  constantly  available  for  the  stimula¬ 
tion  of  business,  of  agriculture,  of  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  nation  in  a  thousand  ways.  These 
aggregations  represent  the  colossal  financial 
power  of  more  than  one  hundred  millions  of 
American  people.  Any  man,  or  any  group  of 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  71 

men,  or  any  racial  unit,  which  could  control 
this  reservoir  would  “dominate”  American 
finance;  unless  such  a  group  did  control  these 
resources  any  suggestion  of  “domination” 
would  be  childish  folly.  Do  the  Jews  exer¬ 
cise  any  such  control?  Everyone  can  apply 
the  test  for  himself.  Run  over  the  list  of  di¬ 
rectors  and  officers  of  the  national  bank  or  the 
savings  bank  in  your  region;  how  many  Jews 
do  you  find  occupying  such  places?  If  there 
is  one  American  city  where  the  Jews  should 
exercise  such  power  it  is  New  York,  for  half 
the  Jews  in  the  United  States  are  found  within 
its  boundaries.  Of  its  six  million  people  and 
more,  at  least  one  and  a  half  million  are  Jews. 
Most  of  these  have  come  in  the  last  forty  years, 
but  at  least  200,000  or  300,000  have  an  origin 
that  goes  back  much  further;  the  race  has  had 
plenty  of  time  to  acquire  prominence  if  it  pos¬ 
sessed  the  indomitable  talent  for  success 
which  is  attributed  to  it.  But  reading  the 
lists  of  the  great  financial  and  fiduciary  in¬ 
stitutions  of  New  York  brings  out  no  more 
astonishing  fact  than  the  infrequency  with 
which  Jewish  names  are  encountered.  He 
who  believes  in  the  ability  of  the  “Anglo- 
Saxon”  element  will  have  his  vanity  tickled; 


72  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

for  the  one  fact  this  investigation  proves  is 
that  the  brains  and  energies  of  the  nation  are 
still  found  in  largest  proportion  in  the  racial 
stock  that  founded  it.  The  names  of  an 
overwhelming  majority  of  the  bank  presidents 
and  officers  and  directors  of  New  York  are 
English  and  Scotch.  The  greatest  banks  are 
the  National  City,  Charles  E.  Mitchell, 
President;  the  Chase  National,  Albert  H. 
Wiggin,  President  ;the  First  National,  George 
F.  Baker,  President;  the  Chemical  National, 
Percy  H.  Johnson,  President;  the  Park  Na¬ 
tional,  Richard  Delafield,  President;  the 
Guaranty  Trust  Co.,  Charles  H.  Sabin,  Presi¬ 
dent;  the  Bankers  Trust  Company,  Seward 
Prosser,  President.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
hardly  anything  of  magnitude  can  be  accom¬ 
plished  in  financial  New  York  without  the  co¬ 
operation  of  these  institutions.  Not  only  are 
the  officers  almost  exclusively  Christian,  but 
a  Jewish  director  on  one  of  their  boards  is  the 
greatest  rarity.  The  National  City  Bank — 
the  “Standard  Oil  Bank” — the  most  powerful 
financial  institution  in  New  York,  with  de¬ 
posits  of  $644,000,000,  has  22  directors;  not 
one  of  them  is  a  Jew.  The  Chase  National 
has  22;  not  a  single  Jew.  The  list  could  be 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  73 

extended  indefinitely.  The  Bowery  Savings 
Bank  is  located  in  the  lower  East  Side,  in  the 
great  Russian  Jewish  section;  its  deposits  are 
drawn  largely  from  the  poor  Jewish  workers; 
its  president  is  Henry  A.  Schenck,  and  of  its 
directors,  the  Jewish  representation  is  small. 
The  great  trust  companies  are  similarly  under 
Gentile  “domination.”  The  great  life  insur¬ 
ance  companies — the  Equitable,  the  Mutual, 
the  New  York  Life,  the  Mutual  Benefit  of 
New  Jersey — whose  financial  power  is  almost 
unlimited — are  similarly  a  Gentile  preserve. 
Some  years  ago  the  greatest  financial  scandal 
in  American  history  involved  the  first  three 
of  these;  the  abuses  brought  to  light  were  of 
that  peculiar  kind  which  the  anti-Semitic 
writer  likes  to  portray  as  “Jewish”;  the 
directors,  that  is,  were  found  “exploiting” 
the  resources  of  the  policy  holders;  practi¬ 
cally  all  the  names  that  conspicuously  figured 
in  this  unsavoury  affair,  however,  were 
Christian. 

Why  does  the  Jew,  supposedly  the  world’s 
keenest  financial  mind,  have  so  little  in¬ 
fluence  in  these  great  fortresses  of  liquid 
capital?  The  Jew  himself  would  probably 
answer  that  a  prejudice  exists  against  him; 


74  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

that  there  is  a  conscious  effort  to  exclude  him. 
But  that  is  an  unsatisfactory  explanation. 
The  fact  that  there  is  an  occasional  Jew 
occupying  a  position  of  importance  in  these 
institutions  shows  that  there  is  no  bar  to  his 
success  provided  he  possesses  the  essential 
qualifications.  The  real  solution  lies  deeper; 
it  will  be  found  in  what  has  already  been  said 
about  the  Jew  as  an  individualist.  So  long  as 
banking  was  an  enterprise  in  which  an  indi¬ 
vidual,  or  a  group  of  individuals,  could  suc¬ 
cessfully  engage,  then  the  Jew  stood  a  much 
better  chance  of  survival — even  of  “domi¬ 
nance.”  The  great  bankers  of  Europe  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century  were  the  Rothschilds; 
the  Rothschilds  were,  and  are,  merely  a 
family  group,  working  sympathetically,  but 
with  the  loosest  kind  of  an  organization. 
They  are  really  pawnbrokers  on  a  grand  scale. 
They  lend  to  governments  and  to  private  en¬ 
terprises — always  as  individuals.  Forty  years 
ago  August  Belmont,  a  Jew  from  Frankfort, 
who  came  to  the  United  States  as  American 
representative  of  the  Rothschilds,  was  far 
more  prominent  as  a  banker  than  is  the  house 
of  that  name  to-day;  the  Seligmans,  a  banking 
family  that  really  represented  an  attempt 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  75 

to  establish  something  in  the  nature  of  an 
American  Rothschild  dynasty,  rendered  great 
service  in  financing  the  Federal  Govern¬ 
ment  in  the  Civil  War;  the  house  of  Seligman, 
which  is  still  important,  by  no  means  occupies 
the  position  now  that  it  did  then.  The  point 
is  that  American  banking  and  finance  are 
rapidly  losing  their  old  individualistic  char¬ 
acter.  The  business  is  now  being  done  by 
great  corporations,  even  by  great  “trusts.” 
Financial  power  is  controlled  by  large  aggre¬ 
gations  of  stockholders  who  exercise  their 
power  through  the  agency  of  boards  of 
directors,  presidents,  vice-presidents,  and  the 
like.  The  prime  quality  that  is  needed  for 
success  is  that  of  cooperation,  of  team  work, 
ability  to  lead  great  forces  of  subordinates, 
to  work  as  a  unit  in  a  great  organization.  The 
present-day  banker  does  not  operate  with 
his  own  capital,  but  with  that  of  thousands  of 
depositors;  he  does  not  necessarily  labour  to 
build  up  a  great  institution  which  he  owns 
himself;  he  is  daily  constructing  an  edifice  in 
which  his  proprietor's  right  is  frequently 
quite  small.  These  qualities  are  not  Jewish 
qualities. 

There  is  one  great  centre  of  Jewish  financial 


76  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

power  in  New  York;  in  all  discussions  of  the 
“international  Jew”  the  firm  of  Kuhn,  Loeb 
&  Co.  invariably  occupies  the  centre  of 
the  stage.  That  this  is  an  institution  of 
great  importance  is  true.  Yet  this,  like  all 
the  big  Jewish  financial  houses  of  New  York 
— Speyer  &  Co.,  Hallgarten  &  Co.,  Goldman, 
Sachs  &  Co.,  Lazard  Freres — is  a  private 
bank.  It  is  a  partnership,  not  a  corporation. 
It  is  also  an  exceedingly  close  partnership, 
almost  a  family  affair;  an  examination  shows 
that  tendency  to  intermarriage  which  the 
Rothschilds  regarded  as  an  essential  part  of 
their  success;  thus  Mr.  Jacob  H.  Schiff 
married  the  daughter  of  Solomon  Loeb,  Mr. 
Otto  H.Kahn  married  the  daughter  of  Abra¬ 
ham  Wolf — an  important  member  of  the  firm 
until  his  death  about  twenty  years  ago — Mr. 
Paul  Warburg  married  the  daughter  of  Solo¬ 
mon  Loeb,  and  Mr.  Felix  Warburg  married 
the  daughter  of  Jacob  H.  Schiff.  The  tend¬ 
ency  to  make  the  Jewish  banking  houses  asso¬ 
ciations  of  relatives,  either  by  blood  or  by  mar¬ 
riage,  is  a  characteristic  of  Jewish  financial 
houses;  the  banking  house  of  Lehman  Broth¬ 
ers,  of  New  York,  will  admit  no  partner  who 
does  not  bear  the  name  of  Lehman.  The 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  77 

mere  recital  of  these  facts  discloses  that  such 
importance  as  the  Jewish  community  has  at¬ 
tained  in  American  finance  is  a  product  of  the 
individualistic  instinct.  The  successful  Jew¬ 
ish  bankers  are  practically  all  “private”  bank¬ 
ers.  Yet  of  this  group  there  is  only  one  that 
is  extremely  important,  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co.,  and 
it  is  significant  that  the  success  of  this  house 
is  largely  the  result  of  its  association  with  the 
man  who  was  perhaps  the  greatest  financial 
genius  of  his  time — a  non-Jew,  indeed  so  typ¬ 
ical  a  Yankee  as  Edward  H.  Harriman.  Mr. 
Otto  Kahn,  of  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co.,  has  himself 
described  the  great  contributions  which  Har¬ 
riman,  through  his  operations  with  the  Union 
Pacific,  Southern  Pacific,  Northern  Pacific, 
Santa  Fe,  and  other  great  railroad  systems, 
made  to  the  house  of  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co.  The 
prominence  of  this  concern,  in  the  last  twenty- 
five  years,  is  largely  attributable  to  these  daz¬ 
zling  achievements. 

Yet  even  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co.  is  by  no 
means  the  greatest  of  the  private  banking 
houses.  Compared  with  J.  P.  Morgan  &  Co. 
it  is  rather  a  small  affair.  The  late  Mr. 
Schiff  and  the  late  Mr.  Morgan  were  contem¬ 
poraries;  they  may  be  said  to  represent  the 


78  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

banking  achievements  of  the  Jew  and  the 
Gentile  in  their  most  successful  aspect.  Mr. 
Schiff  was  a  product  of  the  Jewish  banking 
school  of  Frankfort,  Germany;  Mr.  Morgan 
was  literally  a  Connecticut  Yankee — he  was 
born  in  Hartford,  of  a  family  which  traced  its 
origin  to  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  The  average 
observer  of  American  finance  would  not  hesi¬ 
tate  long  in  estimating  which  was  the  greater 
of  the  two.  It  was  incomparably  Mr.  Mor¬ 
gan.  The  Morgan  mind  had  a  continental 
sweep,  a  profound  insight  into  the  energies 
and  capacities  of  the  American  people,  a  con¬ 
structive  grasp  of  the  forces  that  underlay 
American  progress,  and  a  creative  quality  that 
could  establish  great  industries  and  rebuild 
great  properties,  which  one  would  vainly  look 
for  in  Mr.  Schiff.  Mr.  Schiff  was  a  great 
money  lender,  while  Mr.  Morgan  added  to 
the  functions  of  a  banker  a  great  business  and 
organizing  capacity,  and  even  certain  quali¬ 
ties  of  the  statesman.  He  was  the  creator  of 
the  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  the  In¬ 
ternational  Harvester  Corporation,  the  Inter¬ 
national  Mercantile  Marine;  when  Great 
Britain,  in  the  early  years  of  the  century,  had 
its  great  shock  over  the  “American  invasion,” 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  79 

and  the  average  Englishman  each  morning  ap¬ 
prehensively  opened  his  paper  to  find  what 
new  British  industry  had  fallen  into  American 
hands,  Mr.  Morgan  was  the  man  whom  they 
visualized  as  the  great  national  peril.  Even 
his  name  passed  into  an  ominous  pun;  he 
was  the  great  “Morganizer,”  his  acquisition 
of  British  interests  were  “Morganatic  mar¬ 
riages.”  To  recount  Mr.  Morgan’s  achieve¬ 
ments  means  to  tell  practically  the  whole  rail¬ 
road  history  of  the  last  forty  years.  Besides 
his  interests  in  railroads  and  big  industrial  en¬ 
terprises,  Mr.  Morgan  possessed  great  sub¬ 
sidiary  banks  and  trust  companies — the  Guar¬ 
anty  Trust  Company,  the  Bankers  Trust  Com¬ 
pany,  and  the  like.  Mr.  Schiff  had  no  such 
tributaries  as  these.  Whenever  trouble  loomed 
in  American  business  and  finance,  it  was  not 
to  Mr.  Schiff  that  the  community  looked  for 
assistance;  the  financial  capital  of  the  United 
States  automatically  became  Mr.  Morgan’s 
library  on  Thirty-Sixth  Street.  Nor  has  the 
financial  greatness  of  the  Morgan  house 
passed  with  his  death.  In  the  World  War, 
the  Morgan  firm  was  the  banker  and  the  fiscal 
agent  of  all  the  Allied  Governments,  and,  as 
such,  the  corner  of  Wall  and  Broad  streets 


8o  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

became  the  financial  capital  of  the  world. 
The  gulf  that  separates  Morgan  &  Company 
from  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co.  grows  wider  every 
day. 

There  is  no  complaint  that  rests  on  so  slight 
a  foundation,  therefore,  as  the  so-called 
Jewish  “dominance”  of  American  finance. 
There  is  no  peril  quite  so  illusory  as  that  of 
the  “international  banker.”  Compared  with 
the  financial  power  wielded  by  certain  Ameri¬ 
can  financiers,  the  greatest  “international 
banker”  is  a  pygmy.  John  D.  Rockefeller 
could  buy  up  all  the  Rothschilds  and  have  a 
tremendous  fortune  left  after  doing  it.  The 
annual  income  of  this  famous  family  is  very 
much  smaller  than  that  of  Henry  Ford.  That 
there  are  many  Jewish  brokers;  that  an  incon¬ 
siderable  number  belong  to  the  New  York 
Stock  Exchange;  that  Paul  Warburg  was 
partly  responsible  for  the  Federal  Reserve 
Law — thereby  rendering  a  very  great  public 
service;  that  the  same  gentleman,  at  the  earn¬ 
est  solicitation  of  the  Government,  became  a 
member  of  the  Federal  Reserve  Board;  that 
Mr.  Eugene  Meyer  is  the  head  of  the  War 
Finance  Corporation — in  this  case  also  ren¬ 
dering  an  efficient  public  service;  that  there 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  81 

are  certain  minor  private  Jewish  banking 
houses  in  New  York  and  other  cities — these 
things  are  true ;  but,  in  view  of  the  overwhelm¬ 
ing  importance  of  native  Americans  in  the 
control  of  the  financial  resources  and  banking 
operations  of  the  country,  they  form  an 
exceedingly  flimsy  basis  on  which  to  erect  this 
huge  myth.  Moreover,  not  only  does  “the 
international  banker”  not  monopolize  things 
now,  but  it  is  extremely  unlikely,  for  the  rea¬ 
sons  given,  that  he  ever  will.  Besides  the  fact 
that  the  Jewish  temperament  and  mental 
mechanism  are  rather  unadapted  to  the  Ameri¬ 
can  scheme  of  business  organization,  the  shift¬ 
ing  of  the  world’s  financial  capital  from 
Europe  to  the  United  States  will  react  un¬ 
favourably  upon  the  Jewish  banker.  In  the 
past  he  has  served  as  a  medium  through  which 
European  money  has  been  directed  into 
American  enterprise,  but  there  is  no  longer 
any  European  money  to  flow  westward.  The 
movement  is  in  the  other  direction. 


IV 

An  examination  of  American  industry 
brings  out  the  same  facts.  The  Jews  do  not 


82  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

control  the  great  corporations  which  manip¬ 
ulate  the  mighty  American  industrial  ma¬ 
chine;  in  fact,  they  are  almost  negligible.  The 
Lewisohns  and  the  Guggenheims  are  import¬ 
ant  people  in  copper  smelting,  but  they  are  by 
no  means  monopolists,  for  Mr.  John  D. 
Ryan  and  others  are  very  active.  The  Jews 
have  practically  nothing  to  do  with  the 
Standard  Oil  Company  and  its  many 
branches,  or  with  the  United  States  Steel 
Corporation,  or  with  American  railroads — 
except  in  some  cases  as  bankers — or  with 
street  railways  or  light  and  power  companies, 
or  with  telephones  or  telegraphs  or  electric 
works,  or  with  the  textile  factories,  or  with 
the  automobile  business,  or  with  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  agricultural  machinery,  or  with 
lumber  or  its  manufactures,  or  with  leather 
and  its  manufactures.  These  industries  com¬ 
prise  the  largest  part  of  what  may  be  called 
the  American  economic  structure.  Neither 
as  owners,  controllers,  managers,  or  workmen 
are  the  Jews  of  even  minor  importance.  It  is 
hardly  to  be  expected  that  they  should  be. 
Few  of  these  enterprises  give  much  scope  for 
that  individualism  which  is  the  Jews’  leading 
quality — and  defect.  They  are  all  combined 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  83 

into  huge  corporations.  Nor  in  the  basic 
sources  of  American  wealth  is  this  element  in 
our  population  especially  powerful.  Amer¬ 
ica’s  greatest  wealth  is  her  farms;  the  Jew 
is  not  a  farmer,  and  the  vast  riches  annually 
yielded  in  the  agricultural  regions  therefore 
do  not  enrich  him  except  as  they  indirectly 
enrich  the  whole  American  population.  In 
the  preparation  of  foodstuffs  certain  Jews — 
Morris  and  Sulzberger — have  established  a 
certain  eminence,  but  here  again  their  con¬ 
trol  is  far  from  monopolistic.  The  Armours 
and  the  Swifts  are  still  the  overshadowing 
“villains”  of  the  beef  trust.  In  the  publishing 
business  there  are  a  few  Jewish  houses,  but  the 
vast  bulk  of  the  business  is  in  the  hands  of 
Gentiles.  Much  is  said  about  the  so-called 
“dominance”  of  the  Jews  over  the  newspaper 
press.  Yet  those  who  make  this  broad  asser¬ 
tion  seldom  give  specifications.  It  is  true  that 
Mr.  Adolph  S.  Ochs,  the  proprietor  of  the 
New  York  Times ,  is  a  Jew;  indeed,  when  the 
anti-Jewish  writers  wish  to  portray  the 
“menace  of  the  Jew,”  Mr.  Ochs  usually  serves 
the  same  purpose  in  journalism  that  Mr.  Paul 
Warburg  does  in  finance.  Yet  he  is  about  the 
only  Jew  of  commanding  importance  in 


84  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

American  journalism.  William  Randolph 
Hearst,  the  most  extensive  owner  of  American 
newspapers  and  periodicals,  is  not  a  Jew! 
The  other  great  newspapers  of  New  York — 
the  Herald, t he  Sun, the  Tribune,  the  World* 
the  Globe,  the  Evening  Post — are  all  owned 
by  Gentiles.  In  Chicago,  the  McCormicks 
own  the  Tribune,  Mr.  Victor  Lawson  the 
Daily  News,  and  Hearst  the  American.  The 
Associated  Press,  the  chief  disseminator  of 
news,  is  a  Gentile  organization;  Mr.  Melville 
Stone  has  been  its  presiding  genius  for  years. 
The  Rosewaters,  who  once  did  yeoman  service 
as  part  of  the  Jew  stage  army  regularly  trotted 
out  by  anti-Semitic  writers  to  prove  the  Jew¬ 
ish  control  of  the  American  press,  no  longer 
own  the  Omaha  Bee.  Possibly  a  few  smaller 
towns  have  Jewish  proprietors  and  editors,  but 
the  great  mass  of  American  journalism,  on 
both  the  business  and  the  literary  side,  is 
Christian.  The  editorial  staff  of  the  New 
York  T imes,  at  least  in  its  important  positions, 
is  almost  exclusively  Gentile. 

When  it  comes  to  the  matter  of  retail  trade, 
an  interesting  situation  presents  itself.  Here 


*  There  is  a  Jewish  strain  in  the  Pulitzers,  who  own  the  World,  but  they 
regard  themselves  as  Gentiles  and  are  so  regarded  by  the  New  York  community. 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  85 

is  a  phase  of  business  in  which  the  Jew,  ac¬ 
cording  to  the  popular  conception  of  his 
business  characteristics,  should  excel.  He  is 
generally  portrayed  as  the  great  middleman, 
as  the  world’s  premier  merchant;  how  then 
does  he  thrive  in  a  land  which  its  detractors 
love  to  pillory  as  the  great  nation  of  shop¬ 
keepers?  In  this  department  the  Jew  has 
indeed  made  excellent  progress,  even  when 
pitted  against  a  native  population  which  is 
especially  gifted  with  the  business  instinct. 
If  we  go  back  twenty-five  years,  practically 
all  the  New  York  department  stores  were 
owned  and  operated  by  Christians.  That 
statement  is  no  longer  true.  Perhaps  the 
larger  number  of  these  emporiums — Altman, 
Stern  Brothers,  R.  H.  Macy  &  Co.,  Gimbel 
Brothers— are  the  property  of  Jews.  Yet 
they  by  no  means  possess  a  monopoly;  there 
are  several  great  establishments — Wana- 
maker’s,  Lord  &  Taylor,  Arnold  Constable, 
McCreery’s,  Hearn’s — still  under  the  very 
successful  control  of  Gentiles.  Despite  Jew¬ 
ish  ability  in  retail  trade,  the  fact  remains  that 
the  greatest  American  retail  merchants  are 
not  Jews;  the  Jews  themselves  bow  down  be¬ 
fore  John  Wanamaker  as  America’s  greatest 


86  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

merchant,  and  the  Marshall  Field  establish¬ 
ment  in  Chicago  certainly  outranks  any  Jew¬ 
ish  achievement  in  the  same  line.  The  Jewish 
prominence  in  the  clothing  trades  is  suffi¬ 
ciently  evident;  they  “dominate”  it  on  its 
manufacturing  side;  yet  it  is  strangely  true 
that  the  great  retail  clothing  houses  of  New 
York  are  not  Jewish;  one  needs  only  to  recall 
such  names  as  Rogers  Peet,  Brooks  Brothers, 
Browning  King,  Brokaw.  In  retail  trade, 
indeed,  the  Jews  seem  to  display  that  same 
disparity  to  which  attention  has  already  been 
called ;  they  achieve  substantial  success,  but 
they  do  not  seem  to  reach  the  very  highest 
class.  The  finest  retail  shopping  quarter 
in  the  United  States  is  Fifth  Avenue,  north  of 
Forty-Second  Street.  The  most  casual  walk 
on  this  beautiful  prospect  brings  out  one 
really  astonishing  fact:  that  is  the  infrequency 
of  Jewish  names.  The  great  mass  of  these 
signs  bear  old  English  and  Scotch  names. 
An  occasional  Jewish  patronymic  appears, 
but  it  is  in  the  minority.  Even  in  those  oc¬ 
cupations  in  which  the  Jews  have  excelled 
for  centuries — such  as  jeweller  and  silver¬ 
smith — the  Gentiles  still  hold  undisputed 
sway.  Tiffany,  Gorham,  Black,  Starr  & 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  87 

Frost,  Theodore  B.  Starr,  Reed  &  Barton, 
Crichton,  Kirkpatrick,  Cartier — these  are  the 
firms  most  important  in  the  jewellery  and  sil¬ 
ver  retail  trade,  and  none  of  them  are  Jews. 
The  same  is  true  of  even  so  Jewish  a  specialty 
as  furs.  Jews  are  not  inactive,  but  the  im¬ 
portant  furriers  bear  such  names  as  Revillon, 
Gunther,  Jaeckel  (not  Jewish).  Jews  are 
active  in  the  manufacture  of  hats  and  caps; 
yet  New  York’s  great  hatters  are  Knox, 
Young,  Dunlap,  Dobbs. 

This  theory  that  the  Jews  are  the  all-power¬ 
ful  forces  in  American  trade  and  finance  can 
be  disposed  of  by  one  single  consideration: 
who  are  the  great  American  millionaires?  Do 
their  names  invariably  end  in  “-stein”  and 
“-sky”?  Here  again  is  a  test  which  each  one 
can  make  for  himself.  Just  think  of  the  ex¬ 
tremely  rich  men  in  your  neighbourhood. 
That  some  of  them  are  Jews  is  not  improbable; 
but  the  overwhelming  majority  are  undoubt¬ 
edly  Gentiles.  As  the  wealth  of  the  United 
States  is  largely  centred  in  New  York  City  and 
as  New  York  contains  one  half  of  all  the  Jews 
in  the  United  States,  this  test  is  especially  im¬ 
portant  in  that  city.  The  World  Almanac 
publishes  a  list  of  what  it  calls  “Rich  New 


88  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

Yorkers”;  in  this  connection  it  is  worth  while 
reproducing  this  list  verbatim. 


J.  D.  Rockefeller,  Sr. 
Louise  W.  Carnegie 
Adelaide  C.  Frick 
Helen  C.  Frick 
George  Ehret 
Edward  L.  Harkness 
Vincent  Astor 
J.  P.  Morgan 
Otto  H.  Kahn 
Thomas  F.  Ryan 
Edward  D.  Faulkner 
J.  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr. 
Marianne  Faulkner 
James  B.  Ford 
Anna  M.  Harkness 
Mark  S.  Harkness 
Oliver  H.  Aldred 
William  E.  Smith 
Cornelius  Vanderbilt 
Anna  K.  Vanderbilt 
Gertrude  V.  Whitney 
Payne  Whitney 
Arabella  D.  Huntington 
Florence  V.  A.  Twombly 
Solomon  R.  Guggenheim 
Archibald  B.  Gwathmey,  Jr. 
James  T.  Gwathmey 
William  Hall 
Marion  Haviland 
Louis  Hilborn 
Flora  Hirsch 
Louis  L.  Hopkins 
Anna  B.  Horn 
Blanche  Hutton 
Lillian  B.  Hyde 
Daniel  G.  Reid 
Seymour  J.  Hyde 


Edith  B.  Parker 
Abby  Rockefeller 
Helen  G.  Barker 
George  F.  Baker,  Jr. 
James  W.  Barney 
Bernard  M.  Baruch 
Xavier  N.  Benziger 
Courtlandt  Bishop 
Harry  S.  Black 
Lizzie  P.  Bliss 
Marie  B.  Bogart 
Frederick  F.  Ayer 
George  F.  Baker 
Helen  D.  H.  Astor 
Adolph  Lewisohn 
James  A.  Stillman 
Archibald  B.  Gwathmey 
Archer  M.  Huntington 
Ethel  Israel 
Alice  A.  Block 
Helen  C.  Bostwick 
Isa  MacB.  Bindley 
Adelaide  S.  Clarke 
Leslie  J.  Pearson 
Mary  C.  Thompson 
Emily  A.  Thorn 
Minnie  H.  Wolff 
Artemas  Ward 
James  H.  Kidder 
Lillie  V.  Kohn 
Benjamin  M.  Duke 
Mary  E.  Bierstadt 
Harry  Payne  Whitney 
Alice  G.  Vanderbilt 
Lucy  P.  Eastman 
Ernestine  Hall 
Oscar  Passavant 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  89 


Richard  A.  Spring 
John  Stewart 
Robert  E.  Tod 
Mary  L.  Van  Ingen 
Emma  B.  Auchincloss 
George  Ehret,  Jr. 
Charles  L.  Eidlitz 
Jennie  T.  Eidlitz 
Cyrus  L.  W.  Eidlitz 
Lillian  M.  Stokes 
Helen  L.  Stokes 
Herman  Taylor 
Emma  Thorn 
Otto  Timmie 
J.  Kennedy  Tod 
Ruth  V.  Twombly 
Fred  W.  Vanderbilt 
Grace  Vanderbilt 
Grace  G.  Vanderbilt 
Louise  A.  Vanderbilt 
Anna  von  Seidlitz 
Felix  M.  Warburg 
Isaac  H.  Wolff 
Ramson  L.  Wood 
St.  John  Wood 
James  Jagger 
Marguerite  L.  Johnson 
George  O.  Jones 
Frances  O.  Jones 
Joseph  S.  Joseph 
Leo  Joseph 
Hamilton  F.  Kean 
James  L.  Laidlaw 


Valeria  Langloth 
Charles  W.  Leighton 
Walter  Lewisohn 
Ada  W.  S.  Moore 
J.  N.  Morgan 
Junius  S.  Morgan 
Frances  Morgan 
Barbara  S.  Morgan 
Henry  New 
Belmont  Tiffany 
Mortimer  L.  Schiff 
Thomas  B.  M.  Gates 
Hattie  A.  Greenwald 
Daniel  Guggenheim 
Edmond  A.  Guggenheim 
Henry  F.  Guggenheim 
Isaac  Guggenheim 
Margaret  Prager 
Alta  R.  Prentice 
Murry  Guggenheim 
Ralph  Pulitzer 
Simon  Guggenheim 
Thomas  Sinclair 
Herbert  L.  Carlebach 
Herbert  J.  Carr 
Henry  W.  Chappell 
William  N.  Cromwell 
Eleanor  de  G.  Cuyler 
Marcus  Daly 
Maisel  Dreicer 
Ralph  W.  Dundas 
Sarah  A.  Duke 


This  exhibit  brings  out  certain  facts.  The 
main  thing  it  shows  is  that  the  racial  stocks 
which  founded  the  United  States  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago  still  control  its  wealth. 
With  the  exception  of  a  few  Jewish  names 


9o  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

and  an  occasional  Scotch  and  German,  all  the 
families  represented  in  this  list  were  well 
established  here  when  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  signed.  That  the  Jews 
have  a  considerable  representation  is  true, 
but  the  list  at  once  disposes  of  the  ridiculous 
theory  that  they  are  “dominant”  in  American 
finance.  And  the  mere  catalogue  of  names,  of 
course,  is  not  the  important  fact,  but  the  for¬ 
tunes  which  these  names  represent.  It  would 
be  a  simple  matter  to  pick  out  any  one  of  sev¬ 
eral  Gentiles — Rockefeller,  Carnegie,  Van¬ 
derbilt,  Astor — who  represent  larger  fortunes 
than  those  of  all  the  Jews  in  this  list  combined. 

In  all  that  has  been  said  of  the  economic 
progress  of  the  Jews  in  America  one  fact 
should  not  escape  observation.  The  Jewish 
names  in  this  list  are  especially  significant: 
Lewisohn,  Kahn,  Wolff,  Guggenheim,  War¬ 
burg,  Schiff;  they  are  all  names  of  German 
Jews.  The  same  statement  is  true  of  the  great 
Jewish  department  store  proprietors:  Straus, 
Stern,  Gimbel,  Altman.  An  examination  of 
the  occasional  Jewish  name  that  appears  as 
a  director  of  banks  would  bring  out  the  same 
fact.  The  important  Jewish  banking  houses 
— Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co.,  Speyer  &  Co.,  Goldman, 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  91 

Sachs  &  Co.,  Hallgarten — are  almost  exclu¬ 
sively  Germanic.  In  the  financial  advertise¬ 
ments  of  the  magazines  a  few  Jewish  names 
figure;  they  are  invariably  the  names  of  Ger¬ 
man  Jews.  The  big  Jewish  lawyers  of  New 
York — Untermyer,  Marshall — and  of  Chi¬ 
cago — Levy  Meyer,  Samuel  Alshuler — also 
belong  to  the  German  branch  of  the  race. 
Most  of  the  Jews  who  have  reached  important 
public  position — Henry  Morgenthau,  Oscar 
Straus,  Julius  Kahn,  Louis  Brandeis,  Abra¬ 
ham  Elkus— are  likewise  German  Jews;  a  few 
others,  Bernard  Baruch,  Benjamin  Cardozo, 
belong  to  that  Spanish-Portuguese  element 
which  has  been  established  in  this  country  for 
nearly  three  hundred  years.  Yet  these  Ger¬ 
man  and  Spanish  branches  represent  only  a 
small  minority  of  the  Jewish  population  of 
America. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  "MENACE"  OF  THE  POLISH  JEW 

I 

THE  most  important  facts  brought  out  in 
the  preceding  chapters  are  that  the  Jews 
have  by  no  means  made  the  great  economic 
and  financial  progress  in  this  country  which 
is  commonly  attributed  to  them,  and  that  the 
largest  measure  of  success  they  have  achieved 
is  the  work  of  the  minority  elements  in  the 
Jewish  population — the  Spanish,  or  Sephardic 
Jews,  who  have  been  a  part  of  the  American 
population  for  nearly  three  hundred  years,  and 
the  German  Jews,  who  came  in  considerable 
numbers  from  1820  to  1880.  Of  the  3,000,000 
or  more  Jews  in  the  United  States  these  more 
efficient  elements  comprise  perhaps  500,000. 
What  part  have  the  remaining  2,500,000  or 
more  played  in  the  economic  development  of 
this  country?  To  what  extent  have  they 
shown  themselves  especially  adapted  to  the 

92 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  93 

conditions  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic?  In 
other  words,  to  what  extent  have  they  demon¬ 
strated  that  they  are  fitted  for  that  assimila¬ 
tion  in  the  economic,  political,  and  social  life 
of  America  which  is  the  one  supreme  test  of 
citizenship? 

From  the  standpoint  both  of  the  citizen  and 
business  man,  no  more  abrupt  change  could 
be  imagined  than  that  which  the  Eastern  Jew 
made  when  he  transplanted  himself  from  the 
old  cities  of  Poland  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard 
of  the  United  States.  This  Jew  had  never 
been  a  citizen,  and  had  never  developed  the 
slightest  sense  of  citizenship,  as  that  word  is 
understood.  For  thousands  of  years  he  had 
merely  been  the  member  of  a  tribe,  governed 
by  tribal  laws  and  tribal  chiefs.  With  the 
Jews  from  western  Europe  who  had  preceded 
him  to  America,  in  much  smaller  numbers,  the 
Polish  or  Eastern  Jew  had  little  in  common 
except  a  common  religion.  I  have  made  this 
point  before,  but  it  cannot  be  made  too  fre¬ 
quently  or  too  emphatically,  for  it  is  the 
fundamental  fact  in  the  existing  Jewish  prob¬ 
lem.  The  Armenian  and  the  Englishman  are 
both  Christians;  in  fact,  the  Armenian  was  a 
Christian  when  the  Englishman  was  a  pagan; 


94  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

but  no  one  would  be  justified  in  regarding  an 
Armenian  and  an  Englishman  as  members  of 
the  same  race  'and  upholders  of  the  same 
ideals  of  society.  Perhaps  the  difference 
between  an  Eastern  and  a  Western  Jew  is  not 
so  great  as  that  between  an  Armenian  and  an 
Englishman,  but  still  this  disparity  does 
represent  a  wide  gulf.  And  the  difference 
— and  this  is  the  important  point — is  really 
one  of  race.  It  is  necessary  only  to  look  at  a 
typical  Polish  Jew,  with  his  blond  hair,  his 
blue  or  green  eyes,  and  his  stubby  nose,  to 
see  that  physically  he  is  quite  a  different  per¬ 
son  from  the  Spanish  or  the  German  Jew. 

These  physical  traits  portray  the  great 
infusion  of  Slavic  and  Tartar  or  Mongol 
blood  that  flows  in  his  veins;  and  this  infusion 
is  a  matter  of  history.  In  the  Middle  Ages  a 
famous  kingdom  of  the  Khazars  extended  its 
rule  in  Russia  for  a  considerable  area  north 
of  the  Black  Sea.  The  authorities  are  not 
agreed  as  to  precisely  what  racial  stock  these 
people  belonged  or  whence  they  came.  The 
Jewish  TLncyclopcedia  describes  them  as  of 
Turkish  origin;  other  writers  classify  them 
somewhat  indefinitely  as  “Turanians”;  while 
others  refer  to  them  as  Tartars  or  Mongols. 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  95 

On  one  point  all  commentators  are  agreed: 
historically  and  ethnologically  they  did  not 
have  the  slightest  connection  with  Israel.  Yet 
the  Khazars,  according  to  so  high  an  authority 
as  Dr.  Maurice  Fishberg,  “made  up  the  nu¬ 
cleus  of  the  future  Jewry  of  eastern  Europe.” 
For  the  Khazars  are  unique  in  this  regard  : 
they  are  the  only  non- Jewish  people  who  are 
known  to  have  embraced  the  Jewish  religion. 
Judaism,  in  the  main,  has  not  been  a  proselyt¬ 
ing  faith ;  it  has  always  been  cherished  as  the 
exclusive  possession  of  the  children  of  Abra¬ 
ham;  there  are  scattered  groups  of  non- 
Jewish  Jews,  it  is  true — there  are  even  a  few 
Chinese  Jews;  but  the  Khazars,  in  a  manner 
the  historic  details  of  which  are  not  known, 
and  concerning  which  many  myths  have 
gathered,  adopted  Judaism  as  their  religion 
in  the  Eighth  Century.  A  map  published 
herewith,  taken  from  the  Jewish  Encyclo¬ 
pedia ,  discloses  that  there  was  only  one  great 
compact  mass  of  Jews  in  Europe  in  the  Tenth 
Century,  and  that  these  were  Khazars — eth¬ 
nologically,  a  non-Jewish  people!  For  sev¬ 
eral  succeeding  centuries  the  Khazar  King¬ 
dom  was  a  flourishing  one;  the  vicissitudes  of 
history,  however,  destroyed  the  Khazar  nation 


96  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

and  dispersed  its  people ;  great  hordes  of  them 
drifted  westward  into  Poland;  the  fact  that 
their  religion  was  Jewish  made  it  inevitable 
that  they  should  intermarry  with  the  J ews  who 
were  already  established  there  in  large  num¬ 
bers,  and  who  had  probably  come  from  Ger¬ 
many.  Thus  the  blood  of  this  Turkish  or 
Mongol  people  flows  extensively  in  the  veins 
of  the  Eastern  Jew  of  to-day.  A  further  large 
Slavic  mixture  makes  the  Eastern  Jew  racially 
alien  to  Jews  from  other  parts  of  Europe. 
Thus  the  masses  that  comprise  one  fourth  the 
present  population  of  New  York  City  trace 
their  beginnings,  in  considerable  degree,  to 
certain  tribes  that  roamed  the  steppes  of  Rus¬ 
sia  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  happened  to  ac¬ 
cept  the  religion  of  Judah  as  their  own. 

As  candidates  for  assimilation  these  Jews, 
as  they  land  at  Ellis  Island,  are  about  as 
promising  as  a  similarly  inflowing  stream  of 
Hindus  or  Syrian  Druses.  This  may  seem 
an  extreme  statement,  but  a  glance  at  the 
Jews  of  eastern  Europe,  especially  Poland, 
makes  it  clear  that  it  is  not.  For  these 
Eastern  Jews  have  never  been  Europeanized. 
For  ages  they  have  lived,  in  Poland,  in  Russia, 
in  Galicia,  in  Hungary,  in  Rumania,  not  as  a 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  97 

nation  or  part  of  a  nation,  but  essentially  as 
a  tribe.  With  them  the  Jewish  religion  has 
been  the  all-important  consideration,  far 
more  important  than  nationality;  the  right  to 
practise  their  faith,  to  observe  their  Sabbath 
and  religious  holidays,  to  limit  their  diet  to 
the  most  rigid  teachings  of  the  Talmud,  has 
been  valued  much  higher  than  the  mere  right 
to  enjoy  political  equality.  A  Jew  of  the  old 
breed  in  America  takes  pride  in  calling  him¬ 
self  an  American  and  resents  any  imputation 
that  he  is  not;  a  Jew  in  Germany,  as  the  Great 
War  showed,  is  almost  fanatical  in  his  asser¬ 
tion  of  his  Germanism;  but  a  Jew  in  Poland 
just  as  vehemently  resents  being  called  a  Pole. 
“I  am  not  a  Pole;  I  am  a  Jew,”  he  retorts. 
After  a  sojourn  of  800  or  1,000  years  in  Poland 
he  does  not  speak  the  Polish  language;  his 
dialect  is  a  form  of  middle  low  German  which 
was  spoken  in  certain  parts  of  Germany  in 
the  Middle  Ages  and  which  is  still  spoken  in 
a  few  remote  areas.  The  orthodox  Jew  in 
Poland  not  only  lives,  by  preference,  in 
crowded  ghettoes  in  the  cities,  but  he  dresses 
in  a  way — a  long  gabardine  of  black  cloth 
reaching  to  his  ankles  and  a  skull  cap  trimmed 
with  fur — which  emphasizes  his  Jewish  par- 


98  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ticularism.  Elis  long  beard  and  the  ringlets 
about  his  ears  are  also  part  of  his  religion. 
He  treats  his  womankind  in  a  way  that  sug¬ 
gests  his  Asiatic  origin.  “Thank  God  I  am 
not  a  woman,  Thank  God  I  am  not  a  goy ”* 
is  the  prayer  of  thanksgiving  with  which  he 
begins  his  day.  Just  as  Japanese  women 
blacken  their  teeth  and  Chinese  women  bind 
their  feet,  so  the  orthodox  Polish  Jewesses, 
after  marriage,  shave  their  heads.  These  are 
merely  the  outward  indications  of  an  Oriental¬ 
ism  that  controls  all  phases  of  Jewish  life. 
For  centuries  the  orthodox  Jews  existed  in 
Poland  under  an  order  that  was  tribal  and 
patriarchal — never  national.  They  were  not 
subject  to  the  laws  and  the  civil  and  criminal 
administration  of  the  country  but  they  were 
ruled,  in  all  departments  of  life,  by  their  own 
rabbis,  who  administered  the  law  as  it  is  laid 
down  in  the  Old  Testament  and  the  Talmud. 
They  even  counted  time,  not  according  to  the 
Christian,  but  according  to  the  Jewish 
calendar.  The  British  Commission  sent  to 
investigate  the  condition  of  the  Jews  in 
Poland  were  astonished  to  find,  in  interro- 


>> 


*  The  word  goy  is  Hebrew  for  non-Jew.  It  is  translated  as  “gentile, 
“stranger,”  or — in  a  free  sense — “Christian.” 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  99 

gating  witnesses,  that  few  knew  the  day  of 
the  week,  the  month,  or  the  year;  the  reason 
is  that  they  all  reckoned  time  according  to 
the  orthodox  Jewish  calendar.  That  this  ex¬ 
clusiveness  is  not  necessarily  enforced  upon 
an  unwilling  people  is  evident  from  the  fact 
that  the  Jews  of  Poland  demanded  of  the 
Versailles  Peace  Conference — and  success¬ 
fully— the  right  to  be  regarded  as  a  “mi¬ 
nority”  people  in  a  resurrected  Poland.  This 
means  that  the  Jews  intend  to  maintain  them¬ 
selves  in  Poland  as  a  separate  people,  with 
the  right  to  a  certain  number  of  seats  in  every 
municipal  council  and  the  national  parlia¬ 
ment,  with  important  powers  of  legislation 
and  taxation,  with  their  own  law  courts,  the 
privilege  of  using  their  own  language,  and 
other  important  advantages  which  they  are 
to  enjoy  not  as  Poles  but  as  Jews. 

Thus  the  organization  of  the  Eastern  Jews 
in  Europe,  in  its  political  and  social  aspects, 
is  primitive,  tribal,  Oriental;  and  their  econo¬ 
mic  status  represented  just  about  the  same 
stage  of  progress.  Though  the  population 
did  contain  a  large  number  of  handicrafts¬ 
men,  especially  in  the  tailoring  trades,  for 
the  most  part  the  Polish  Jews  were  middle- 


ioo  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

men — hucksters,  hawkers,  peddlers,  small 
tradesmen,  petty  bankers,  and  the  like.  The 
Polish  masses  were  agriculturists,  and  the 
Jews,  who  were  for  the  most  part  city  dwellers, 
acted  as  middlemen  in  the  distribution  of  their 
products.  They  would  travel  into  the  sur¬ 
rounding  country,  chaffer  with  the  peasants 
for  their  vegetables,  and  sell  them  in  the  city. 
Poland  of  course  was  not  an  industrial  state; 
factories  were  few;  there  was  thus  no  oppor¬ 
tunity,  had  the  Jew  really  had  the  inclination, 
for  training  in  industrial  life.  They  were  the 
small  shopkeepers  in  the  town;  they  hawked 
their  wares  up  and  down  the  streets;  such  oc¬ 
cupations,  however,  could  not  furnish  support 
for  the  entire  Jewish  population,  the  result 
being  that  the  great  masses  lived  under  condi- 
tions  of  appalling  poverty  and  social  degrada¬ 
tion.  That  they  were  uncleanly  in  their 
habits  was  perhaps  the  inevitable  consequence 
of  the  overcrowded  conditions  under  which 
they  exist,  for  their  poverty  was  so  extreme 
that  a  great  population  struggled  from  hand 
to  mouth,  never  knowing  whence  their  daily 
bread  was  to  come. 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  ioi 


II 

Such  was  the  exotic  mass  that  the  steam¬ 
ships  began  dumping  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard 
forty  years  ago,  and  which  has  been  attempt¬ 
ing  since  to  adjust  itself  to  the  economic 
conditions  of  the  United  States.  That  their 
preparation  for  this  experience  had  been  most 
meagre  has  already  been  made  plain.  The  im¬ 
migrating  races  which  had  preceded  the  East¬ 
ern  Jew  had  found  abundant  opportunities  in 
a  land  whose  foremost  note  was  the  pioneering 
spirit.  Take  the  original  settlers,  for  ex¬ 
ample — those  colonists  from  the  British  Isles 
who,  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  formed 
80  per  cent,  of  its  population,  and  whose 
descendants  form  not  far  from  60  per  cent, 
of  its  population  to-day.  We  first  see  these 
hardy  frontiersmen  in  the  Seventeenth  Cen¬ 
tury  making  accessible  to  civilization  the 
Atlantic  seaboard;  in  the  early  Nineteenth 
Century  they  poured  across  the  Alleghany 
Mountains  into  the  Ohio  Valley,  here  also 
building  up  a  great  agricultural  country  and 
founding  cities  and  great  industries;  after  the 
Civil  War  the  same  elements  crossed  the  Mis¬ 
sissippi  and  the  Missouri,  creating  flourishing 


102  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

commonwealths  as  far  as  the  Pacific  Coast. 
This  was  a  real  immigration — this  the  real 
business  of  a  new  people  in  a  new  land.  In 
the  wake  of  this  original  population  came  the 
other  great  races  of  northwestern  Europe. 
The  Germans  did  their  part,  and  it  was  a 
splendid  one,  in  opening  the  farm  lands  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley — this  also  was  nation 
building  in  the  true  sense;  the  Irish  also, 
though  rather  too  much  inclined  to  form  colo¬ 
nies  in  cities,  distributed  themselves  generally 
and  became  a  great  contributing  element  in 
American  industry  and  agriculture;  the  Scan¬ 
dinavians,  almost  exclusively  farmers,  were 
the  most  important  forces  in  making  the 
Northwest  one  of  the  most  stately  agricultural 
regions  in  the  world.  The  Slavs  occupied 
themselves  largely  in  the  mines,  the  packing 
houses,  the  industrial  centres,  and  therefore, 
inferior  though  they  were  in  the  graces  of 
civilization,  they  became  creators  of  wealth  on 
a  huge  scale. 

But  the  Eastern  Jews  presented  an  entirely 
different  aspect.  A  preliminary  view,  as  they 
left  the  immigration  station,  prepared  to 
mingle  with  the  other  races  toiling  to  upbuild 
the  republic,  was  rather  disconcerting.  Their 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  103 

half-starved  appearance,  their  furtive  move¬ 
ments,  their  hollow  chests,  their  undeveloped 
bodies  were  the  outward  physical  signs  of  the 
centuries  of  city  dwelling  that  had  been  their 
portion.  However,  these  traits  were  super¬ 
ficial:  a  short  course  in  the  use  of  the  bathtub 
and  the  toothbrush  might  easily  have 
remedied  these  defects  of  early  training; 
unfortunately  there  were  more  deeply  lying 
phenomena  which  presented  obstacles  to 
Americanization  in  any  real  sense — incorpo¬ 
ration,  that  is,  into  all  phases  of  American 
life.  Probably  the  greatest  of  these  were  the 
religion  and  the  mentality  of  the  Eastern  Jew. 
The  orthodox  faith  itself  offered  an  almost 
complete  impediment  to  his  industrialization. 
The  German,  the  Irishman,  and  the  Italian 
readily  found  employment  in  factories  and  on 
public  works.  The  Jew  could  not  do  so  and 
remain  steadfast  to  his  orthodoxy.  His  Sab¬ 
bath  is  Saturday;  but  American  industry 
recognizes  Sunday  as  the  day  of  rest;  munici¬ 
palities  or  railroads  could  not  employ  Jews 
as  labourers,  as  they  did  the  Irish,  the  Italians, 
and  other  races,  because  the  orthodox  Hebrew 
would  have  felt  compelled  to  drop  his  imple¬ 
ments  on  the  Seventh  day.  Again,  the  Jew 


104  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

is  perhaps  the  most  prayerful  person  in  the 
world;  he  accompanies  practically  every  act 
with  a  fixed  ritual;  almost  every  hour  of  the 
day  has  its  religious  observances.  He  can 
therefore  engage  in  no  occupation  that  does 
not  give  the  opportunity  for  these  almost  con¬ 
tinuous  communings  with  the  Almighty;  even 
though  he  had  had  an  inclination  for  manual 
labour  of  the  usual  kind,  he  could  not  have 
engaged  in  it  and  remained  an  orthodox  Jew. 

These  facts  set  him  as  completely  apart 
from  the  other  immigrating  peoples  as  did 
his  dietary  laws.  So  long  as  they  con¬ 
trolled  his  daily  routine  he  could  never  be¬ 
come  a  working  unit  in  the  American  indus¬ 
trial  machine.  Inevitably,  therefore,  these 
masses  began  to  seek  their  livelihood  in  the 
ways  to  which  they  had  been  accustomed  for 
centuries  in  their  Polish  homeland.  City 
dwellers  for  unnumbered  centuries  in  Europe, 
they  clung  tenaciously  to  the  great  cities  of  the 
Atlantic  seaboard.  Three  thousand  miles  of 
open  continent  beckoned  to  them — fertile 
lands  in  which,  like  Abraham  and  Jacob  of 
old,  they  could  have  practised  sheep  herding 
and  all  the  arts  of  husbandry;  but  apparently 
only  the  already  teeming  cities  had  any  attrac- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  105 

tions.  For  ages  in  Poland  they  had  been  slum 
dwellers,  living  in  horrible,  ill-smelling  ghet- 
toes;  similarly  they  became  slum  dwellers  in 
New  York,  Baltimore,  Boston,  Philadelphia, 
and  other  Atlantic  cities.  This  herding  in  the 
great  centres  of  population  was  something  un¬ 
precedented.  The  Irish  and  the  Germans, 
and  later  the  Italians  did,  indeed,  form  urban 
colonies  to  a  certain  extent — the  large  city 
population  of  “native  Americans”  was  a  de¬ 
velopment  of  the  same  kind;  but  no  other 
immigrating  race  had  become  exclusively 
city  dwellers,  as  did  these  Eastern  Jews. 
But  there  was  one  manifestation  more  aston¬ 
ishing  still.  Not  only  did  they  flock  almost  as 
one  man  to  the  city  slums;  by  far  the  greater 
proportion  of  them  gravitated  to  one  city.  At 
present  the  Jewish  population  of  the  United 
States  is  something  more  than  3,000,000;  of 
these  at  least  one  half  live  in  New  York  City. 
According  to  the  Jewish  Communal  Register, 
all  meat  which  is  slaughtered  near  New  York, 
and  for  its  consumption,  is  killed  by  Shohetim 
— official  Jewish  slaughterers  commissioned 
by  rabbis;  Gentiles  are  therefore  constantly 
eating  Kosher  meat  with  a  sweet  unconscious¬ 
ness  of  its  Levitical  cleanliness.  On  Jewish 


106  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

holidays  at  least  40  per  cent,  of  the  New  York 
school  children  are  absent;  certain  schools  are 
totally  deserted;  and  the  city  departments,  in 
which  Eastern  Jews  are  extensively  employed, 
are  all  but  depopulated.  There  are  more 
Cohens  in  the  New  York  City  Directory  this 
year  than  Smiths!  The  fact  that  half  the 
Jews  in  the  United  States  are  living  in  New 
York  City — where  one  man  in  every  four  is 
a  Jew — is  an  arresting  one;  it  is  the  most 
astounding  development  of  Jewish  immigra¬ 
tion.  Whereas  the  Jewish  population  of 
New  York  amounts  to  nearly  30  per  cent, 
of  the  whole,  the  Jewish  population  of  Phila¬ 
delphia  is  only  10  per  cent,  of  the  whole;  of 
Chicago  10  per  cent.;  of  Cleveland  12  per 
cent. ;  of  Detroit  10  per  cent. ;  of  St.  Louis  and 
Baltimore  8  per  cent.  Why  do  the  Eastern 
Jews  flock  in  such  mighty  numbers  exclu¬ 
sively  to  New  York?  Why  do  other  great 
centres  of  urban  America  apparently  have  less 
attraction  for  them?  It  is  the  most  portentous 
fact  presented  by  the  whole  phenomenon  of 
immigration.  Their  co-religionists,  the  Span¬ 
ish  and  German  Jews,  showed  no  such  persist¬ 
ence  for  the  greatest  American  city;  at  the 
time  of  the  Civil  War,  these  Jews  were  found 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  107 

in  every  city,  every  village,  every  plantation, 
every  mining  camp;  there  never  was  a  time 
when  at  least  half  of  them  fixed  their  habita¬ 
tions  in  one  urban  community. 

Just  as  in  Poland  these  people  had  been  city 
dwellers,  so  here  likewise  they  attempted  to 
reproduce  the  economic  life  to  which  they  had 
been  accustomed  for  centuries.  The  push¬ 
cart,  which  had  hitherto  not  been  a  familiar 
sight  in  New  York,  now  began  to  clog  certain 
public  thoroughfares.  Buying  and  selling  on 
a  small  scale  continued  to  be  the  occupation  in 
New  York,  as  in  Warsaw  and  Lodz,  of  an  in¬ 
finitely  greater  number  than  could  possibly 
earn  a  living  this  way.  Jewish  street  hawk¬ 
ers  filled  the  crowded  thoroughfares,  and  Jew¬ 
ish  retail  shops,  in  infinite  numbers,  sprang  up 
in  all  parts  of  the  city.  Jewish  signs,  printed 
in  Hebrew  characters,  began  to  appear,  not 
only  in  the  crowded  East  Side,  but  in  other 
parts  of  New  York.  Jewish  newspapers, 
likewise  printed  in  Hebrew  characters,  were 
ultimately  found  on  most  New  York  news¬ 
stands.  Advertisements,  printed  in  the  strange 
characters  of  the  Talmud,  found  their  way 
into  the  subway  stations  and  cars.  All  this 
represented  merely  an  attempt  to  reproduce 


108  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

in  New  York  City  the  life  which  the  Jews  had 
led  in  eastern  Europe. 

Ill 

Of  this  tendency  a  few  concrete  illustrations 
will  suffice.  For  centuries  the  Polish  Jews  had 
been  active  in  the  liquor  trade,  and  now  again 
in  this  country  their  energies  found  an  outlet 
in  the  same  direction.  Nothing  better  shows 
how  the  Jewish  business  instinct  differs  from 
that  of  the  Anglo-Saxon.  The  Eastern  Jew  is 
the  most  adroit  shoe-string  capitalist  in  the 
world.  He  can  start  business  on  almost  any¬ 
thing;  a  few  dollars,  the  labour  of  himself  and 
his  family — with  these  as  a  foundation  he  fre¬ 
quently  works  himself  up  to  at  least  a  moder¬ 
ate  prosperity.  Above  all,  as  already  said,  he 
is  an  individualist;  he  must  work  for  him¬ 
self,  not  for  others;  he  must  exclusively  reap 
the  reward  of  his  own  talents  and  industry;  the 
complexities  of  modern  business  organization 
are  entirely  beyond  his  grasp.  Necessarily 
also  he  is  a  middleman.  The  scope  of  his  par¬ 
ticipation  in  a  minor  way  in  certain  trades — 
the  whisky  and  wine  trade,  the  tobacco  trade — 
vividly  brings  out  these  facts.  Though  he 
has  always  been  active  in  the  liquor  business, 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  109 

he  has  had  nothing  to  do  with  beer.  Why? 
Because  the  brewing  of  beer  was  a  great  or¬ 
ganized  industry;  it  required  a  large  capital,  a 
big  plant,  an  organization  based  on  modern 
lines,  with  capital  stock,  directors,  and  execu¬ 
tive  staffs.  Again  the  beer  business  gave 
practically  no  opportunity  for  the  middleman. 
In  the  main  the  breweries  were  their  own  mid¬ 
dlemen;  they  themselves  owned  the  saloons, 
and  the  saloon  keeper  was  little  more  than  an 
employe  or  manager.  In  this  branch  of  the 
business  there  was  therefore  no  chance  for  the 
Eastern  Jew.  But  the  Jews  had  been  wine 
merchants  in  Europe  since  the  time  of  Charle¬ 
magne;  and  they  now  proceeded  to  follow 
their  trade  in  this  country  in  a  way  that  dif¬ 
fered  little  from  the  methods  in  the  day  of  that 
great  monarch.  They  became  omnipresent  in 
the  vineyards  of  California;  of  course  they 
never  raised  the  grapes  themselves;  they  went 
from  place  to  place,  buying  up  the  “must” — 
the  unfermented  juice  freshly  pressed  from  the 
grape;  and  this  in  turn  they  passed  on  to  the 
vintners.  The  job  was  an  intensely  individual 
one  and  the  Jewish  cleverness  at  bargaining 
made  this  particular  operation  in  the  wine 
business  a  Jewish  monopoly. 


Iio  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

Meanwhile  in  the  great  cities,  especially 
New  York,  the  Jews  were  working  into  the 
whisky  business  according  to  methods  of  their 
own.  This  occupation,  as  they  engaged  in  it, 
required  practically  no  capital;  moreover, 
the  trade  was  extremely  profitable.  Only 
exceptionally  did  the  Jew  become  a  distiller; 
as  usual,  he  was  the  middleman.  In  Russia 
and  Poland  he  had  circulated  among  the 
peasants,  selling  his  vodka;  and  now  again  in 
New  York  the  retailing  of  whisky  was  done, 
on  an  extensive  scale,  as  a  peddling  occupa¬ 
tion.  The  Jewish  whisky-merchant  started 
business  in  the  smallest  possible  way.  He 
would  buy  a  few  quarts  from  the  distiller  and 
take  it  to  his  tenement  home.  Every  evening, 
assisted  by  his  family,  he  would  submit  it  to 
the  process  known  as  “blending”;  he  would 
pour  in  a  little  prune  juice  or  caramel  to  give 
the  necessary  colour,  put  it  up  in  bottles,  and 
he  was  ready  for  the  day’s  business.  The  next 
morning  he  would  load  his  little  stock  upon 
his  pushcart,  and  make  the  round  of  his  cus¬ 
tomers — at  first  usually  personal  friends  or 
relatives.  After  scraping  together  a  few  hun¬ 
dred  dollars  in  this  painful  fashion  the  Jew¬ 
ish  whisky  dealer  would  achieve  his  ultimate 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  m 

ambition:  he  would  rent  a  “store”  and  make 
his  bid — usually  a  successful  one — for  “family 
trade.”  Almost  never  did  he  start  a  saloon, 
though,  as  his  career  progressed,  he  commonly 
did  a  large  business  supplying  saloons,  clubs, 
hotels,  and  restaurants.  Hundreds  of  Eastern 
Jews,  starting  in  this  humble  fashion,  rose  to 
be  rich  wholesalers  of  whisky;  a  few,  though 
not  many,  became  distillers.  In  the  days  of 
state  prohibition — the  ten  or  fifteen  years  pre¬ 
ceding  the  Eighteenth  Amendment — these 
Jews  did  an  immensely  profitable  “mail 
order”  business — the  business,  that  is,  of  ship¬ 
ping  this  indispensable  beverage  from  alco¬ 
holic  into  non-alcoholic  states.  At  present 
they  furnish  more  than  their  just  proportion 
of  “bootleggers.” 

In  the  tobacco  business  the  Eastern  Jews 
have  manifested  precisely  the  same  traits. 
Again  they  merely  duplicate  the  kind  of  mer¬ 
chandizing  which  for  centuries  they  have  fol¬ 
lowed  in  Europe.  Just  as,  in  a  limited  sense, 
they  became  manufacturers  of  alcohol — con¬ 
fining  their  operations  almost  exclusively  to 
“blending” — so,  in  a  similarly  restricted  sense, 
have  they  become  manufacturers  and  dealers 
in  tobacco.  The  lines  of  the  business  that 


1 12  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

demanded  large  capital,  organization,  and 
manufacturing  on  a  big  scale  they  ignored; 
but  we  find  the  Jews  filtering  into  those 
branches  where  the  opportunities  for  small 
beginnings  and  individual  operations  are  more 
favourable.  In  the  formation  of  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Tobacco  Company,  for  example,  the 
Jews  had  practically  no  share.  This  great 
corporation  is  entirely  “American.”  But  the 
middlemen  with  whom  it  has  had  constantly 
to  deal  are,  for  the  most  part,  Jews.  Just 
as  the  Jewish  wine  merchants  traversed  the 
vineyards  of  California  buying  up  the  “must” 
so  does  the  Jewish  tobacco  expert  cover  the 
tobacco  farms  of  the  South,  of  New  England, 
Pennsylvania,  and  Ohio,  buying  from  the 
farmers  the  leaf  tobacco.  This  business  is 
intensely  speculative;  prices  fluctuate  from 
day  to  day,  almost  from  hour  to  hour;  a 
thousand  elements  determine  them;  the  Jew 
has  demonstrated  so  much  skill  at  the  opera¬ 
tion  that  he  controls  practically  90  per  cent, 
of  the  crop.  In  tobacco  manufacture  he  is 
also  active,  as  capitalist  and  as  workman — 
always  within  the  limitations  of  mentality  and 
temperament  already  set  forth.  As  a  manu¬ 
facturer,  for  example,  the  Jew  figures  hardly 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  113 

at  all  in  the  production  of  cigarettes,  plug  to¬ 
bacco,  or  snuff — the  latter  archaic  substance 
being  still  made  and  used  in  this  country  to 
a  greater  extent  than  is  popularly  supposed. 
Why  is  the  Jew  scarcely  identified  with  these 
important  and  highly  profitable  branches  of 
the  tobacco  trade?  For  the  same  reason  that, 
though  extensively  occupied  with  the  whisky 
business,  he  concerned  himself  little  with  beer. 
The  manufacture  of  cigarettes  is  a  highly 
organized  industry;  it  operates  great  factories 
in  which  machinery  is  largely  used ;  it  requires 
a  great  capital;  but  the  Jew  does  not  take  to 
organization;  he  is  not  gifted  at  the  operation 
of  machinery;  he  eschews  the  industries  that 
demand  a  great  initial  outlay;  and  so,  in  to¬ 
bacco,  as  in  all  things,  he  is  the  shoe-string 
capitalist. 

But  there  is  one  branch  of  the  tobacco  busi¬ 
ness  that  still  gives  an  opportunity  for  small- 
scale  enterprise  and  in  this  department,  as 
might  be  expected,  the  Eastern  Jew  is  ex¬ 
tremely  active.  This  is  the  manufacture  of 
cigars.  Cigar  making  is  still  largely  a  manual 
industry;  all  that  the  industrious  Jew  needs 
are  a  few  handfuls  of  leaf  tobacco,  a  board, 
and  a  knife;  with  these  he  can  make  his  be- 


1 14  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ginnings  as  a  manufacturer.  The  trick  of 
rolling  cigars  is  acquired  in  a  week  or  so. 
The  first  factory  is  a  tenement  room;  the  first 
employes  are  the  wife  and  children  of  the 
aspiring  industrialist.  In  a  few  days  the  com¬ 
bined  efforts  have  heaped  up  a  small  stock  of 
cigars;  the  head  of  the  family  then  starts  ped¬ 
dling  these  among  his  relatives  or  friends;  in 
the  old  days  the  corner  saloon  became  an  early 
customer;  not  infrequently  the  corner  grocery 
will  exchange  food  for  the  product.  In  this 
way  a  few  hundred  dollars  are  assembled;  a 
room  is  rented  as  a  factory;  Jewish  immi¬ 
grants  are  pressed  into  service;  in  a  few  years 
the  one-time  peddler  has  established  a  profit¬ 
able  business.  The  American  Tobacco  Com¬ 
pany  manufactures  a  small  proportion  of  its 
cigars,  but  probably  not  far  from  75  per  cent, 
of  the  product  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Jews. 
The  president  of  the  American  Cigar  Com¬ 
pany,  the  subsidiary  corporation  that  handles 
cigars,  is  Mr.  A.  L.  Sylvester — a  Jew  whose 
life  story  illustrates  the  manner  in  which  the 
race  rises  by  painful  stages.  At  the  age  of 
eleven  Mr.  Sylvester  began  his  career  as  a 
“sprig  boy”  in  a  Jewish  cigar  factory;  it  was 
his  uninspiring  job  to  sit  on  the  floor  and  re- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  115 

cover  the  leaves  or  “sprigs”  discarded  by  the 
assorters.  He  then  became  a  buyer  of  leaf 
tobacco,  an  occupation  that  took  him  to  the 
farms  of  Connecticut,  Pennsylvania,  and 
Ohio;  and  his  skill  as  a  purchaser  ultimately 
made  him  the  head  of  the  largest  leaf-tobacco 
house  in  the  country.  So  strong  was  his  grip 
on  this  phase  of  the  business  that  he  was  taken 
in  by  the  American  Tobacco  Company  on  its 
formation.  Another  better  known  American 
Jew  who  started  his  career  in  a  tobacco  factory 
and  who  has  since  extended  his  energies  to 
other  lines  is  Mr.  Samuel  Gompers,  president 
of  the  American  Federation  of  Labour,  and 
still  a  member  of  the  Cigar  Makers’  Union. 

IV 

But  capitalism  on  a  small  and  individual 
scale  could  hardly  support  the  great  mobs  of 
Eastern  Jews  that  were  landed  at  American 
ports  between  the  years  1881  and  1914.  An 
overruling  Providence  seemed  to  have  created 
the  great  American  business  of  ready-made 
clothing  specially  with  Jewish  immigration 
in  mind.  The  manufacture  and  the  sale  of 
wearing  apparel  had  for  ages  exercised  a  fas- 


ii6  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

cination  for  the  Jew.  Even  in  the  Middle 
Ages  tailoring  was  one  of  his  favourite  oc¬ 
cupations;  a  common  sight  in  the  cities  of 
Poland  was  the  hundreds  of  Jews  and  Jewesses 
sitting  in  the  ghetto  plying  their  needles  and 
their  shears.  Many  of  the  Polish  Jews  who 
found  their  way  to  this  country  in  the  period 
under  review  had  already  spent  a  life-time 
working  in  the  clothing  trades.  For  reasons 
already  set  forth  the  Jews  could  not  possibly 
labour  in  American  industrial  establishments, 
even  had  they  had  the  inclination — which  is 
not  likely;  but  these  racial  peculiarities 
formed  no  impediment  to  their  absorption  by 
the  sweatshop.  The  manufacture  of  clothing 
in  those  early  days  was  largely  a  household 
or  tenement  industry.  The  several  members 
of  the  family  could  work  according  to  their 
own  routine  and  largely  make  their  own 
hours;  there  was  thus  plenty  of  opportunity 
for  the  prayers,  ablutions,  and  other  devo¬ 
tional  observances  which  are  indispensable  in 
the  daily  life  of  the  orthodox  Hebrew.  They 
could  keep  their  own  Sabbath  and  religious 
holidays  and  work  on  Sunday.  But  the  con¬ 
centration  of  the  Eastern  Jew  upon  the  cloth¬ 
ing  trades  has  a  much  deeper  explanation  than 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  117 

this.  Once  more  it  is  the  familiar  story  of 
Jewish  individualism  and  Jewish  talent  for 
small-scale  capitalism.  It  is  one  of  the  few 
remaining  American  industries  in  which  a 
man  can  start  manufacturing  on  little  money 
and  gradually  build  up  a  large  business,  and 
it  is  one  of  the  few  that  is  not  yet  combined 
in  large  corporations  or  trusts.  The  prevail¬ 
ing  form  of  organization  is  still  the  individual 
or  the  partnership.  Whereas  most  other 
great  manufactured  products  are  consolidated 
in  big  companies,  there  are  still  several 
thousand  independent  clothing  factories  in 
Greater  New  York.  The  industry  is  still 
competitive  in  all  its  many  branches;  and 
the  transition  from  workman  to  sub-contrac¬ 
tor,  from  sub-contractor  to  contractor,  and 
from  contractor  to  wholesaler,  is  still  a  com¬ 
paratively  easy  one.  Every  cap-maker, 
sponger,  sewing-machine  operator,  cutter,  and 
baster  of  to-day  is  the  proprietor  of  to¬ 
morrow;  and  success  means  his  own  financial 
profit — there  are  no  stockholders  among 
whom  the  earnings  must  be  divided :  the  com¬ 
petition,  which  is  feverish  in  its  intensity,  is 
competition  between  thousands  of  units;  there 
is  no  Standard  Oil  Company  or  United  States 


1 1 8  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

Steel  Corporation  dominating  the  garment 
business. 

The  story  of  Jewish  monopoly  in  the  cloth¬ 
ing  trades  is  not  a  pleasant  one;  it  is  a  story 
of  exploitation,  commonly  of  an  exceedingly 
cruel  kind,  and  exploitation  of  Jews  by  Jews. 
Readers  of  Kingsley’s  “Alton  Locke,”  to  say 
nothing  of  Hood’s  “Song  of  the  Shirt,”  do 
not  need  to  be  told  that  the  sweating  system  in 
the  tailoring  trades  did  not  originate  with  the 
Eastern  Jews.  But  never  has  it  reached  such 
an  intensity  or  been  conducted  on  so  extensive 
a  scale  as  under  this  branch  of  Israel  in  the 
great  cities  of  the  United  States,  especially  in 
New  York.  The  manufacture  of  ready-made 
clothing  began  about  1850,  long  before  the 
coming  of  the  Eastern  Jew;  the  earliest 
workers  were  the  Irish ;  to  them  succeeded  the 
Scandinavian,  then  the  German,  then  the 
German  Jew.  But  the  occupation  in  those 
days  was  a  vastly  different  one  from  the  trade 
as  it  has  developed  in  more  recent  times. 
These  earlier  workers  were  journeyman  tail¬ 
ors;  they  had  mastered  all  the  details  of  their 
trade,  at  which  they  had  spent  the  usual  period 
of  apprenticeship.  But  the  masses  of  Jews 
who  entered  the  trades  after  1881  were  not 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  119 

tailors  in  any  real  sense.  The  work  was  now 
minutely  subdivided  and  two  or  three  weeks’ 
instruction  was  usually  sufficient  to  teach  a 
newly  arrived  immigrant  one  of  the  many  op¬ 
erations  necessary  to  the  completion  of  a  gar¬ 
ment.  It  was  the  introduction  of  this  division 
of  labour — the  substitution  of  the  unskilled 
worker  for  the  old-fashioned  tailor — that  en¬ 
abled  the  Eastern  Jew  to  obtain  the  absolute 
dominance  of  the  business  in  all  its  depart¬ 
ments.  The  secret  of  their  prosperity  was 
the  introduction  of  the  contract  system.  For¬ 
merly  the  manufacturers  had  really  made  the 
product  in  all  its  details;  now  the  so-called 
manufacturers  became  merely  capitalists  who 
farmed  out  the  production  of  the  stock  to  a 
multitude  of  contractors.  One  would  do  the 
cutting,  one  make  the  coat,  another  the  vest, 
another  the  “pants,”  and  so  on.  The  manufac¬ 
turer  would  leave  these  separate  garments,  or 
fraction  of  garments,  with  particular  contrac¬ 
tors  and  collect  them  at  a  specified  date.  He 
put  together  his  suits  and  coats,  and  the  endless 
articles  that  constitute  male  and  female  wear¬ 
ing  apparel,  much  as  Mr.  Ford  manufactures 
his  automobiles;  his  business  was  primarily 
to  “assemble”  the  scattered  fragments  into  an 


120  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ordered  whole.  This  organization  rendered 
it  possible  to  start  with  practically  no  capital 
and  to  advance  rapidly  to  proprietorship. 
The  workman  ambitious  of  becoming  a  “con¬ 
tractor” — and,  after  labouring  for  a  year  or 
two,  thousands  began  business  for  themselves 
— could  usually  acquire  the  needed  machinery 
on  credit,  paying  for  it  by  instalments  out  of 
the  proceeds  of  his  contracts. 

He  then  recruited  his  force  from  the 
recently  arrived  immigrant  ship;  he  would 
corral  certain  of  his  relatives  or  friends;  he 
would  stop  pushcart  peddlers  in  the  streets, 
portraying  the  supreme  opportunities  of  a 
career  with  a  sewing  machine  or  a  pressing 
iron.  Ten  or  a  dozen  operators,  scraped  to¬ 
gether  in  this  fashion,  would  congregate  in 
his  tenement  house;  the  contractor  depended 
entirely  for  funds  upon  the  manufacturer  for 
whom  he  worked;  the  latter  would  call  each 
Monday,  receive  the  garments  and  pay  cash, 
and  with  this  the  contractor  would  pay  his 
wages;  in  case  of  a  sudden  shortage  of  money, 
the  neighbourhood  pawnbroker  usually  acted 
as  his  banker.  The  workroom,  in  these  early 
days  of  the  industry,  before  the  state  laws 
forced  the  sweatshops  out  of  the  tenements, 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  121 

was  a  pretty  distressing  place.  The  “task” 
system  added  to  its  discomforts.  This  was  the 
plan  of  setting  a  fixed  amount  of  work  as  the 
day’s  “task,”  and  of  rigidly  holding  the  op¬ 
eratives  to  their  “quota.”  At  the  head  of  the 
“team,”  as  the  group  of  workers  was  known, 
sat  the  contractor  himself  and  he  usually 
acted  as  the  pacemaker.  He  did  perhaps  the 
“machine  work”;  finishing  his  operation,  he 
would  pass  the  garment  to  a  neighbour,  who 
did  the  needle  work;  the  latter  in  turn  would 
pass  it  to  a  “baster”;  the  baster  would  pass  it 
to  a  “finisher”;  the  next  in  line  would  be  the 
buttonhole-maker;  then  came  the  “feller,” 
then  the  “presser.”  Five  or  six  garments  a 
day,  produced  under  this  hectic  system,  at 
first  constituted  the  “task”;  as  competition 
increased,  the  number  grew  to  ten,  fifteen,  or 
twenty.  Ten  or  a  dozen  bent  and  wretched 
figures,  huddled  in  a  small  unventilated  room, 
the  atmosphere  fetid  with  the  odours  of  cook¬ 
ing  and  heated  with  the  fire  of  the  pressing 
irons,  every  man  feverishly  struggling  to  fin¬ 
ish  one  garment  before  another  was  passed 
down — hardly  anything  more  horrible  than 
such  a  physical  and  nervous  strain  could  be 
imagined.  These  unfortunates  would  work 


122  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ten,  twelve,  sixteen,  sometimes  eighteen  hours 
a  day;  the  ambition  that  made  the  work 
endurable  was  the  expectation  of  early  grad¬ 
uation  from  the  bench  into  the  ranks  of  con- 

% 

tractors.  Conditions,  of  course,  have  vastly 
improved  since  those  early  days;  the  work  is 
now  done  for  the  most  part  in  factories;  but 
the  essentials  of  the  organization,  the  contract 
system,  are  still  maintained. 

When  the  Eastern  Jews  first  started  in,  the 
German  Jews  controlled  this  industry;  the 
latter,  however,  could  not  survive  this  new 
kind  of  competition;  their  co-religionists  from 
the  east  of  Europe  rapidly  drove  them  out  of 
business — many  of  them  into  bankruptcy. 
The  case  of  Meyer  Jonasson,  a  German  Jew 
who,  before  the  Eastern  Jews  became  power¬ 
ful,  was  the  greatest  manufacturer  of  women’s 
cloaks,  fairly  pictures  the  displacement  that 
now  took  place.  The  intense  competition  that 
came  from  his  own  co-religionists  rapidly  de¬ 
stroyed  Mr.  Jonasson’s  great  business  and 
drove  him  to  insolvency  and  to  suicide.  All 
personal  experiences  were  not  so  tragic  as 
this  one;  yet  what  took  place  in  the  case  of 
Meyer  Jonasson  is  the  story  of  the  whole  trade 
— the  German  Jews  were  driven  out  by  their 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  123 

Eastern  brethren.  Thus  the  economic  his¬ 
tory  of  the  Eastern  Jew  in  this  country  is 
largely  a  history  of  the  clothing  trades.  In 
this  the  masses  have  found  employment  and 
thousands  of  individuals  have  found  fortune. 
In  other  ways  it  has  served  as  a  basis  of  pros¬ 
perity,  for  it  has  furnished  the  Jewish  com¬ 
munity  with  the  liquid  capital  that  has  made 
possible  its  operations  in  other  lines.  Just  as 
the  so-called  Standard  Oil  group  has  used  the 
money  made  in  oil  for  the  purchase  of  rail¬ 
roads,  steel  mills,  and  other  enterprises,  so 
have  the  Eastern  Jews  used  the  cash  heaped 
up  in  the  cloak  and  suit  trade  for  operations 
in  other  lines.  Their  activities  in  the  moving 
picture  business — for  it  is  a  business  of  the 
crassest  sort — especially  illustrate  this  tend¬ 
ency.  That  the  Eastern  Jews  dominate  the 
“movies”  just  as  overwhelmingly  as  they 
dominate  the  clothing  trades  is  the  fact,  and 
the  still  more  interesting  fact  is  that  there  is 
the  closest  connection  between  the  two  oc¬ 
cupations.  The  entertainment  of  the  Ameri¬ 
can  masses  is  provided  almost  exclusively  by 
men  who  a  few  years  ago  were  occupied  in 
clothing  them.  William  Fox  was  a  sponger 
in  a  garment  factory;  Marcus  Loew  was  a 


124  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

dealer  in  furs;  Adolph  Zukor  was  also  a  fur 
merchant;  and  Carl  Laemmle  started  his 
career  in  the  clothing  business.  Writers  who 
are  called  to  Hollywood  are  somewhat  dis¬ 
couraged  to  find  that  the  men  with  whom 
they  must  discuss  their  scenarios  and  whose 
critical  judgment  they  must  appease  are  almost 
exclusively  ex-buttonhole  makers,  basters,  and 
pressers,  whose  knowledge  of  the  English 
language  is  very  limited  and  whose  artistic 
taste  has  not  progressed  greatly  beyond  the 
intellectual  standards  of  Laura  Jean  Libbey. 
There  is  much  discussion  to-day  as  to  what 
is  the  matter  with  moving  pictures;  but  what 
is  the  matter  is  very  apparent:  the  trouble  lies 
in  the  fact  that  they  are  merely  one  depart¬ 
ment  of  the  cloak  and  suit  industry. 

y 

The  other  activity  in  which  the  Eastern  or 
Polish  Jew  has  specialized  is  real  estate. 
H  ere  is  a  kind  of  business  that  appeals  es¬ 
pecially  to  his  racial  pride.  As  a  recent 
European  he  places  a  social  stress  on  the 
ownership  of  land  to  which  the  American 
gives  little  consideration;  he  comes  from  a 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  125 

part  of  the  world  where  the  possession  of  the 
soil  has  immemorially  been  the  privilege  of 
the  aristocracy.  More  than  this,  the  laws  of 
Russia  have  always  excluded  Jews  from  own¬ 
ing  land;  the  right  of  doing  so  in  the  United 
States  therefore  is  perhaps  the  greatest  boon 
conferred  by  their  new  citizenship.  Real 
estate  also  calls  into  play  those  traits  which 
have  already  been  described  as  the  most  out¬ 
standing  ones  of  the  Eastern  Jew:  his  individ¬ 
ualism,  his  passion  for  the  personal  possession 
of  the  thing  that  he  can  call  his  own,  his 
genius  for  operating  on  a  very  small  capital, 
his  penchant  for  bargaining,  for  buying  and 
selling,  for  speculation.  He  worms  his  way 
into  the  ownership  of  the  soil  in  precisely  the 
same  way  that  he  starts  in  the  clothing  busi¬ 
ness,  in  cigar  making,  in  the  liquor  trade.  He 
scrapes  together  a  few  hundred  dollars  at  his 
sewing  machine  or  pressing  board;  with  this 
he  purchases  an  equity  in  a  tenement  house, 
giving  first,  second,  third,  fourth,  and  fifth 
mortgages  for  the  remainder.  He  then  moves 
his  family  into  the  least  desirable  apartment; 
he  himself  becomes  the  janitor;  his  wife  does 
not  disdain  the  job  of  scrubwoman;  his  sons 
not  infrequently  do  service  as  painters,  paper 


126  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

hangers,  and  general  repairmen.  In  this  way 
the  expenses  are  reduced  to  a  minimum;  his 
“overhead”  is  very  light;  everything  is  kept 
within  the  family,  which  labours  eighteen 
hours  a  day  with  one  consuming  determina¬ 
tion — to  get  together  money  enough  to  pay  off 
the  series  of  mortgages  as  they  fall  due.  The 
family  can  subsist  on  the  modicum  of  food 
and  can  wear  the  cheapest  clothes;  it  spends 
no  money  on  amusement  or  general  frivolity; 
it  has  but  one  purpose  in  view— to  meet  those 
payments!  No  “agent”  or  “manager”  is 
employed;  every  week  the  proprietor  visits 
his  tenants,  collecting  his  rent,  almost  all  of 
which  promptly  goes  into  the  bank.  He  has 
thus  purchased  a  $30,000  or  $40,000  tenement 
with  a  “shoe  string”  of  a  few  hundred  dollars; 
yet  he  invariably  collects  enough  from  his 
tenants  to  make  his  payments.  One  house 
paid  for,  he  buys  another  and  repeats  the  op¬ 
eration  ;  he  begins  speculating,  buying  one  day 
and  selling  another,  perhaps  skimming  a  profit 
of  a  few  hundreds;  he  is  also  an  insatiable 
gambler  in  vacant  property. 

So  skilful  are  these  newly  arrived  Jews  in 
this  game  that  practically  all  their  racial  com¬ 
petitors  long  since  retired  from  the  field.  In 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  127 

New  York  City  the  greater  part  of  the  soil, 
at  least  in  the  tenement  sections,  is  now  held 
by  Eastern  Jews.  A  list  of  the  owners  of 
New  York  reads  like  an  immigrant  manifest 
at  Ellis  Island;  if  you  glance  over  the  real 
estate  transfers  in  the  morning  paper,  it  is 
seldom  that  any  except  a  Jewish  name  strikes 
your  eye.  Such  well-established  property- 
owning  families  even  as  the  Astors  are  retir¬ 
ing  from  this  field;  for  years  they  have  been 
selling  their  lower  grade  land  to  Polish 
Jews.  In  the  better  apartment  sections  the 
Jews  are  also  extensive  owners;  yet  that  same 
disparity  which  the  Jews  show  in  other  direc¬ 
tions,  commercial,  scientific,  and  artistic,  ap¬ 
pears  also  in  this.  Able  as  they  are  in  many 
ways  they  seldom  reach  the  top.  The  greatest 
landowners  of  New  York  are  still  Christians. 
The  Jews  own  little  property  on  Broadway, 
Wall  Street,  Fifth  Avenue,  and  other  es¬ 
pecially  high-grade  areas.  The  great  skyline 
that  greets  the  incoming  passenger  represents 
Gentile  not  Jewish  enterprise.  The  Jews  do 
not  own  the  Woolworth  Building,  the  Metro¬ 
politan  Tower,  the  City  Investing  Building, 
the  Equitable  Building,  or  hundreds  of  others 
that  could  be  mentioned.  New  York,  in  its 


128  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

finest  architectural  aspects,  is  still  the  pre¬ 
serve  of  the  native  stock  and  every  day  be¬ 
comes  more  so. 

Of  course  the  one  business  that  most  people 
have  in  mind  when  they  think  of  Jewish  ac¬ 
tivities  is  the  theatre.  The  word  “business” 
is  used  with  complete  accuracy.  Several 
years  ago  Mr.  Marc  Klaw,  in  a  public  apology 
for  the  “theatrical  trust”  of  which  he  was  so 
important  a  part,  boldly  took  the  stand  that 
the  theatre  was  not  art — it  was  purely  a  com¬ 
mercial  enterprise.  The  Jews,  discussing  this 
phase  of  their  activities,  commonly  use  the 
expression  “the  amusement  business.”  The 
words  tell  the  whole  story.  Yet,  in  estimating 
their  influence  upon  the  stage,  it  is  necessary 
to  be  discriminating.  The  actors  and  ac¬ 
tresses,  for  the  larger  part,  are  Gentiles;  the 
same  is  true  of  the  playwrights,  and,  to  a 
greater  extent  than  is  commonly  supposed,  of 
the  “producers” — the  managers  who  put  on 
the  plays.  The  artistic  side  of  the  stage,  with 
certain  important  exceptions,  is  thus  in  the 
hands  of  Christians.  That  the  American 
stage,  so  far  as  the  production  of  the  work  of 
American  writers  is  concerned,  has  greatly 
improved  in  the  last  quarter  of  a  century;  that 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  129 

the  technique  of  play  production — lighting, 
scenic  effects,  and  the  like — has  similarly  im¬ 
proved;  must  be  apparent  to  all  except  those 
who  are  altogether  hopelessly  hidebound  wor¬ 
shippers  of  the  past.  That  it  has  acquired  a 
startling  freedom  in  the  treatment  of  certain 
aspects  of  life  is  also  apparent.  There  is  a 
tendency  to  attribute  this  salaciousness  to  Jew¬ 
ish  management;  yet  there  is  a  danger  of  be¬ 
coming  overhasty  in  this  judgment.  The 
English  stage,  to  say  nothing  of  the  French, 
shows  the  same  tendencies,  and  the  Jews  do 
not  dominate  these  theatres  to  the  extent  that 
they  do  the  American.  Another  disconcert¬ 
ing  fact  is  that  the  authors  of  these  plays  are 
too  frequently  Gentiles.  Recently  Mr.  Avery 
Hopwood  has  permitted  to  be  published  the 
fact  that  he  has  made  nearly  $1,500,000  in  the 
last  ten  years  as  a  playwright.  Unfortunately 
many  of  the  most  profitable  of  his  plays  are  of 
salacious  character. 

Making  all  necessary  qualifications,  how¬ 
ever,  the  fact  remains  that  the  Jewish  in¬ 
fluence  on  the  stage,  as  a  whole,  has  been  de¬ 
plorable.  Probably  most  people  would  not 
regard  David  Belasco  and  the  Frohmans  as 
disintegrating  influences;  significantly  Mr. 


1 30  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

Belasco  is  a  Jew  of  Spanish-Portuguese  stock, 
while  the  Frohmans  are  German  in  origin. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Shuberts  are  Hungar¬ 
ian  Jews;  they  belong  to  that  eastern  branch 
of  the  race  which  has  shown  less  sympathy 
with  American  ideals  than  have  their  Ger¬ 
man  and  Spanish  predecessors.  The  chief  sin 
that  is  commonly  laid  at  the  feet  of  these  men 
is  that  they  have  reduced  the  theatre  to  a 
purely  commercial  and  speculative  enterprise. 
Only  to  a  limited  extent  are  they  theatrical 
men  at  all;  that  is,  they  produce  few  plays; 
primarily  they  are  dealers  in  theatrical  real 
estate.  By  purchase,  lease,  or  other  arrange¬ 
ment  they  have  succeeded  in  gaining  control 
over  most  of  the  theatres  in  the  United 
States.  Their  business  is  that  of  renting 
these  buildings  to  the  actual  producers  of 
plays.  This  power  makes  them  practically 
the  dictators  of  the  theatrical  profession;  they 
can  say  what  plays  are  to  be  produced,  where 
they  are  to  be  produced,  and  when.  The  re¬ 
sult  is  the  elimination  of  the  theatrical  man¬ 
ager,  as  he  was  known  in  the  old  days.  The 
managers  who  then  gave  distinction  to  the 
American  stage  were  men — occasionally  wom¬ 
en — who  trained  their  own  companies,  con- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  131 

trolled  their  own  theatres,  and  arranged  their 
own  “bookings.”  Every  important  American 
city  had  its  own  stock  company,  companies  that 
not  only  furnished  wholesome  entertainment 
but  did  great  service  as  schools  of  actors  and 
actresses.  In  those  days  such  actors  as  Edwin 
Booth  and  Mary  Anderson  could  start  on  tour 
with  no  company  of  their  own,  using  the  stock 
companies  in  the  cities  they  “played”  as  “sup¬ 
port.”  But  the  Jewish  theatrical  syndicate, 
by  gaining  control  of  the  theatre  buildings, 
reduced  theatre  managers  to  the  position  of 
caretakers  and  janitors;  they  had  nothing  to 
say  as  to  the  companies  they  could  engage; 
all  this  was  arranged  for  them  by  a  “booking 
office”  in  New  York.  The  most  unfortunate 
effect  was  this  disappearance  of  these  old 
schools  of  acting.  Actors  like  Edwin  Booth, 
Joseph  Jefferson,  Richard  Mansfield,  and 
Lawrence  Barrett,  and  actresses  like  Mary 
Anderson  and  Ada  Rehan  and  Helen  Mod- 
jeska  have  vanished,  leaving  no  successors. 

There  are  many  other  aspects  of  Russian 
Jewish  immigration.  The  second  generation 
is  largely  employed  in  the  public  service — as 
clerks  and  stenographers  in  the  city  depart¬ 
ments,  as  lawyers,  doctors,  dentists,  as  school 


i32  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

teachers,  policemen,  and  firemen.  Yet  this 
survey  of  their  activities,  limited  as  it  is, 
proves  one  thing.  Their  “assimilation”  has 
taken  place  only  to  a  very  moderate  extent. 
They  have  penetrated  only  slightly  into  the 
multitudinous  businesses  and  industries  that 
make  up  that  great  complex  known  as  Amer¬ 
ican  life.  Any  race  fifty  per  cent,  of  whose 
people  live  in  one  city,  and  the  remaining 
fifty  per  cent,  in  other  large  American  cities, 
can  hardly  be  regarded  as  having  become 
flesh  of  the  flesh  of  the  American  body.  And 
this  summary  of  their  achievements  shows  that 
the  economic  progress  made  by  the  Polish 
Jews  has  not  been  extensive.  Peddlers,  push¬ 
cart  men,  small  liquor  dealers,  factors  in  wine 
and  tobacco,  petty  tradesmen  and  merchants, 
speculators  in  real  estate,  manufacturers  and 
dealers  in  wearing  apparel,  operators  in  mov¬ 
ing  pictures  and  theatres — these  in  the  main 
are  their  occupations,  and  in  none  have  they 
advanced  far  beyond  the  methods  of  the  old 
world.  In  the  great  tide  of  American  busi¬ 
ness  and  finance  they  play  little  part.  In 
most  activities  they  are  speculators — mere 
profit-takers.  The  solid  achievements  that 
can  be  placed  to  the  credit  of  the  Jewish 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  133 

populations  are  almost  exclusively  the  work 
of  the  Sephardic  and  German  elements.  To 
the  spirit  that  animates  the  American  indus¬ 
trial  machine  the  Eastern  Jews  are  still  alien. 
The  masses,  economically  speaking,  still  live 
in  the  Middle  Ages;  the  scope  of  American 
life  is  still  far  beyond  their  imagination. 
Moreover,  they  manifest  certain  disquieting 
tendencies,  which  will  be  described  in  the  next 
chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV 


RADICALISM  AMONG  THE  POLISH  JEWS 
R.E  the  Polish  Jews  anti-nationalistic  in 


1  JL  spirit,  devoid  of  patriotism,  unsympa¬ 
thetic  with  the  thing  known  as  Americanism, 
lacking  in  understanding  and  appreciation 
of  the  principles  that  control  the  American 
system?  Are  their  political  tendencies  sub¬ 
versive,  destructive?  Is  their  attitude,  so  far 
as  American  institutions  are  concerned,  one 
of  restlessness,  dislike,  contempt,  and  even  of 
hostility?  This  is  the  most  serious  charge 
brought  against  the  Polish  Jew;  and  it  cer¬ 
tainly  calls  for  close  and  honest  examination. 

The  last  two  or  three  years  have  witnessed 
a  flood  of  anti -Jewish  literature.  Perhaps 
the  book  that  has  aroused  the  greatest  interest 
is  “The  Jews,”  by  Hilaire  Belloc.  Mr. 
Belloc’s  central  idea  is  that  the  Jew  is  a  hope¬ 
less  alien  in  any  European  society;  that 
nationalism  is  not  one  of  the  gifts  with  which 
heaven  has  endowed  him;  that  he  can  never 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  135 
» 

think  like  an  Englishman,  a  German,  a 
Frenchman,  or  an  American;  that  wherever 
he  is,  he  is  fundamentally  and  always  a  Jew 
and  that  any  attempt  to  incorporate  him  as  a 
citizen  in  the  European  and  American  sense  is 
certain  to  fail.  Probably  most  intelligent 
Americans  will  have  difficulty  in  accepting 
this  sweeping  generalization.  There  are  too 
many  striking  illustrations  to  the  contrary. 
Is  it  true  that  the  nationalistic,  or  the  “patri¬ 
otic”  impulse,  is  an  emotion  of  which  the  Jew 
is  constitutionally  incapable?  Take  England 
itself.  Was  Disraeli  always  a  Jew  and  never 
an  Englishman?  That  of  course  was  the 
charge  made  by  those  Englishmen  who,  in  his 
own  day,  persisted  in  regarding  him  as  an 
adventurer  and  not  as  a  statesman.  Yet  it  is 
difficult  to  read  his  life,  as  recently  presented 
in  six  big  volumes  by  Moneypenny  and 
Buckle,  without  concluding  that  the  glory  of 
England  was  the  one  inspiration  of  his  career. 
Few  Englishmen  of  a  hundred  generations 
had  a  greater  conception  of  England’s  mission 
and  few  felt  a  greater  pride  in  extending  that 
influence  than  this  gifted  descendant  of  the 
Jewish  refugees  of  Spain.  To  seek  an  illus¬ 
tration  in  another  country,  who  will  deny  that 


136  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

Sarah  Bernhardt  was  a  Frenchwoman  in  every 
fibre  of  her  being? 

American  history,  past  and  present,  offers 
too  many  illustrations  of  patriotic  Jews  to 
make  Mr.  Belloc’s  accusation  acceptable. 
The  old  established  Jews  of  colonial  days 
played  an  entirely  creditable  part  in  the 
American  Revolution.  Though  their  instincts 
were  aristocratic,  they  aligned  themselves,  al¬ 
most  to  a  man,  on  the  side  of  the  colonies, 
fought  in  the  American  Army  and  contributed 
in  many  other  ways.  The  story  of  Haym 
Salomon,  a  Polish  Jew,  is  a  typical  one. 
This  man  not  only  volunteered  for  the  most 
dangerous  of  all  kinds  of  military  service — 
that  of  a  spy — but  he  gave  his  entire  fortune 
to  the  patriotic  cause  and  was  one  of  Robert 
Morris’s  chief  reliances  in  financing  the 
Revolution.  It  would  certainly  be  an  un¬ 
grateful  American  who,  in  view  of  this  ex¬ 
ample,  would  say  that  patriotic  Americanism 
is  beyond  the  emotional  and  intellectual  scope 
of  the  Jew.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  ransack 
history.  The  recent  war  sufficiently  refuted 
the  Belloc  generalization.  Most  of  the  Jews 
of  western  Europe  became  as  partisan 
nationalists  as  the  Christians  themselves. 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  137 

The  French  Jew  was  hardly  excelled  in  na¬ 
tional  fervour  by  the  Frenchman  of  long 
standing.  The  German  Jew  was  as  rabidly 
German  as  the  Kaiser  himself;  in  this  country 
the  pro-Germanism  of  the  German  Jew,  even 
after  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  made  him 
exceedingly  unpopular.  The  Jew  who  had 
been  domiciled  for  generations  in  England 
supported  the  British  cause  with  the  utmost 
loyalty.  The  attitude  of  all  these  Jews  was 
nationalistic;  like  the  rest  of  the  population 
they  fell  victims  to  the  old-fashioned  and — 
in  some  circles — discredited  psychosis  known 
as  “patriotism” ;  their  minds,  that  is,  func¬ 
tioned  normally,  not,  as  the  Belloc  school 
would  persuade  us,  exceptionally.  The  the¬ 
ory  that  the  Jew  is  incapable  of  becoming  an 
American  is  one  that  most  observers  can  refute 
for  themselves.  All  of  us  know  Jews  whose 
Americanism  is  as  deep  seated  as  our  own. 
Who  will  say  that  Abraham  Jacobi,  Joseph 
Seligman,  and  August  Belmont,  in  the  past 
generation,  were  not  high-minded  Americans? 
Who  can  deny  such  a  virtue  to  Henry  Mor- 
genthau,  Oscar  Straus,  Julius  Rosenwald, 
Adolph  Ochs,  and  thousands  of  others  whose 
names  will  quickly  come  to  mind?  The 


138  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

charge  that  the  Jew  is  always  and  necessarily 
an  alien,  that  he  can  never  think  like  an  Amer¬ 
ican,  never  feel  pride  in  the  American  tradi¬ 
tion,  never  devote  his  energies  to  maintaining 
the  American  ideal  of  government  and  or¬ 
dered  liberty,  is  one  that  breaks  down  at  the 
slightest  test  of  the  facts. 

Yet,  in  discussing  this  phase  of  the  Jewish 
question,  as  all  the  others,  it  is  necessary  to 
draw  a  sharp  line  of  discrimination.  There 
are  three  divisions  of  Jews  in  the  United 
States.  These  are  the  Sephardic  Jews,  the  Ger¬ 
man  Jews,  and  the  Eastern  or  Polish  Jews. 
The  first  two  make  up  perhaps  500,000  of  the 
more  than  3,000,000  Jews  in  the  United  States. 
The  last  comprise  more  than  2,500,000;  they 
comprise  the  vast  bulk  of  our  Jewish  popula¬ 
tion.  In  previous  chapters  the  present  writer 
has  emphasized  the  fact  that  about  the  only 
quality  the  Sephardic  and  German  Jews  have 
in  common  with  the  Polish  Jews  is  a  common 
religion.  In  all  other  respects,  in  history, 
ethnology,  in  physical  and  mental  character¬ 
istics,  they  are  absolutely  different.  Practi¬ 
cally  all  students  of  Jewish  history  maintain 
that  the  Jews  of  western  and  eastern  Europe 
are  distinct  races — as  different  as  is  an  Eng- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  139 

lishman  from  a  Sicilian,  or  a  German  from  a 
Slav.  That  the  Western  Jews  represent  a 
vastly  higher  stage  of  achievement  in  business, 
in  politics,  in  literature,  and  the  arts  than  the 
Eastern,  has  already  been  made  clear.  Practi¬ 
cally  all  the  great  Jewish  names  that  have 
become  familiar  to  cultivated  people — Spi¬ 
noza,  Mendelssohn,  Heine,  Disraeli,  Ehrlich 
— are  those  of  Western  Jews.  Such  success  as 
has  come  to  American  Jews  in  business  and 
finance  is  confined,  almost  exclusively,  to  Jews 
of  Western  origin;  such  are  the  Seligmans, 
the  Schiffs,  the  Kahns,  the  Warburgs,  the 
Guggenheims.  Is  it  true  that  in  this  matter 
of  “Americanization”  this  same  distinction 
must  be  made?  Is  it  a  fact  that,  as  a  mass, 
the  Spanish  and  German  Jews  become  good 
Americans  and  that,  as  a  mass,  the  Polish 
Jews  do  not? 

It  is  only  conclusions  based  on  the  status  of 
the  rank  and  file  that  have  the  slightest  value. 
Many  writers  dispose  of  these  questions  by  a 
test  which  is  simplicity  itself.  The  question 
of  the  Jewish  leadership  of  Russian  Bolshe¬ 
vism  has  produced  a  violent  literature,  pro 
and  con.  Anti-Semitic  writers  have  produced 
books  and  pamphlets  demonstrating  that  the 


1 40  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

movement  is  a  Jewish  one:  the  champions  of 
the  Jews  have  rebutted  with  ponderous  proofs 
that  it  is  not.  The  literary  methods  in  both 
cases  are  the  same.  Elaborate  lists  of  Soviet 
cabinets  are  printed  intended  to  show  that 
the  majority  of  the  leaders  are,  or  are  not, 
Jews.  Yet  such  evidence  as  this  is  not  espe¬ 
cially  important.  The  point  is  not  whether 
certain  leaders  are  Jews  or  Gentiles;  the  only 
important  point  is  the  extent  to  which  the 
Jewish  masses  themselves  are  infected  with 
this  revolutionary  practice.  And  the  same 
principle  applies  to  the  study  of  the  quality  of 
the  citizenship  of  the  Polish  Jews  in  the  great 
American  cities.  That  Emma  Goldman  and 
Alexander  Berkman  are  Eastern  Jews  does 
not  necessarily  prove  that  the  whole  East  Side 
of  New  York  is  inhabited  by  anarchists.  That 
Morris  Hillquit,  an  Eastern  Jew,  is  the  lead¬ 
ing  exponent  of  Socialism  in  this  country,  is 
not  positive  proof  that  the  entire  Jewish  com¬ 
munity  is  devoted  to  the  teachings  of  the  Third 
Internationale.  The  only  evidence  that  has 
value  is  that  which  concerns  the  masses  of  the 
people.  That  the  names  of  Polish  Jews  so 
constantly  appear  in  all  revolutionary  and 
anti-nationalistic  movements  in  New  York  is 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  141 

not  a  sufficient  reason  for  framing  an  indict¬ 
ment  against  the  million  and  a  half  men, 
women,  and  children  that  make  up  its  Jewish 
population;  the  one  point  that  concerns  the 
nation  is  the  extent  to  which  these  seditious 
leaders  really  represent  this  great  compact 
population. 

It  must  be  admitted,  at  the  beginning,  that 
the  history  and  “psychology”  of  the  Polish 
Jew  are  not  a  satisfactory  preparation  for 
American  citizenship.  His  background  has 
been  altogether  unfavourable.  He  differs 
from  his  Sephardic  and  Germanic  brothers  in 
that  he  has  not  developed  a  mentality  charac¬ 
terized  by  the  nationalistic  impulse.  Unlike 
the  Spanish  and  the  German  Jew,  the  Polish 
has  never  been  the  citizen  of  any  nation,  unless 
Israel  itself  is  a  nation.  His  natural  feeling, 
indeed,  is  to  distrust  and  hate  the  government 
under  which  he  lives,  and,  in  view  of  his  his¬ 
tory  for  the  last  century  and  a  half,  this  is 
not  surprising.  Throughout  this  period,  the 
larger  number  of  the  Polish  Jews  have  been 
denizens  of  the  Russian  Empire.  They  be¬ 
came  the  children  of  the  Czar  when  the  east¬ 
ern  provinces  of  Poland  were  forcibly  added 
to  the  Russian  dominion.  The  treatment  re- 


1 42  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

ceived  for  the  ensuing  century  and  a  half  was 
hardly  the  kind  that  would  persuade  them  that 
government  was  a  thing  to  be  loved  and  re¬ 
spected.  The  hostility  which  the  Eastern 
Jews  manifest  toward  any  established  order, 
even  that  of  the  United  States,  is  usually  at¬ 
tributed  to  this  severe  experience. 

Is  it  surprising,  their  apologists  ask,  that 
they  should  think  that  government  is  some¬ 
thing  to  be  feared,  hated,  and  even  conspired 
against?  Yet  entire  frankness  obliges  one  to 
insist  that  the  problem  is  more  deep-seated. 
The  Polish  Jew  has  been  a  subject  of  the  Czar 
for  less  than  a  century  and  a  half;  for  the  six 
or  seven  hundred  years  preceding  that  he  had 
been  a  subject  of  the  old  Polish  Kingdom. 
Under  the  rule  of  Poland  he  had,  on  the 
whole,  been  treated  well.  In  the  Middle  Ages 
Poland  was  generally  known  as  the  paradise 
of  the  Jew.  Here  he  was  permitted  to  live  in 
peace  and  quiet,  to  ply  his  favourite  trades  un¬ 
disturbed,  to  enjoy  his  religion  and  religious 
practices  unimpeded  by  the  fierce  bursts  of 
fanaticism  that  disgraced  most  other  coun¬ 
tries  of  Europe.  Despite  this  fact,  the  Polish 
Jew  had  never  developed  any  particular 
attachment  to  Poland.  He  had  apparently 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  143 

not  learned  to  love  the  nation  in  which  he  had 
found  so  hospitable  a  refuge,  and,  in  the  course 
of  the  centuries,  he  had  never  become  an  in¬ 
tegral  part  of  it.  He  had  never  even  learned 
its  language;  though  the  Spanish  Jews  spoke 
Spanish,  the  French  Jews  French,  the  Ger¬ 
man  Jews  German,  and  the  English  Jews 
English,  the  Polish  Jews  had  never  adopted 
Polish  as  their  vernacular.  They  were  almost 
the  only  branches  of  their  race  who  continued 
to  write  their  speech  in  the  strange  Hebrew 
characters  of  the  Old  Testament.  Similarly 
they  had  never  become  a  part  of  the  Polish 
State ;  they  were  as  distinct  a  tribe  in  the  midst 
of  a  European  civilization  as  were  the  bands 
of  gypsies  that  also  roamed  eastern  Europe. 
The  life  they  maintained  was  modelled  after 
that  of  the  Jews  of  the  days  of  Ezra.  They 
always  resented — as  they  do  to-day — the  idea 
that  they  were  Poles  or  a  part  of  the  Polish 
State;  they  insisted  on  being  Jews  and  nothing 
else.  Nor  does  it  seem  to  be  the  case  that  the 
Jews  in  Poland  were  compelled  to  lead  a  dis¬ 
tinct  existence  by  the  Government  as  a  part  of 
an  anti-Jewish  policy;  the  Ghetto  was  their 
own  creation  and  their  own  choice;  the  fact 
that  they  were  able  to  enjoy  this  privilege  and 


i44  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

many  others  was  what  made  their  sojourn  in 
Poland  so  agreeable  and  so  free  from  the  per¬ 
secutions  to  which  they  were  subject  in  other 
countries.  This  seems  to  indicate  that  the 
lack  of  national  feeling  which  the  Polish  Jews 
evince  to-day  is  not  the  product  of  Russian 
persecution,  but  that  it  is  a  deep-lying  racial 
trait.  Poland  was  perhaps  the  greatest  “melt¬ 
ing  pot”  of  the  Middle  Ages ;  it  found  no  diffi¬ 
culty  in  absorbing  Germans,  Frenchmen, 
Englishmen,  and  Irish;  but  it  never  absorbed 
its  Jews.  For  it  seems  the  fact  that  the  Polish 
Jews  care  no  more  for  Poland  to-day  than  did 
their  mediaeval  ancestors.  As  a  mass  they 
have  shown  no  interest  in  a  regenerated 
Poland;  in  the  World  War  their  support  was 
thrown  to  Germany;  and  the  present  bitter 
anti-Jewish  feeling  in  Poland  to-day  is  ex¬ 
plained  by  this  pro-Germanism.  Why  is  it 
that,  whereas  German,  French,  Spanish,  and 
French  Jews  have  demonstrated  this  nation¬ 
alistic  impulse,  the  Polish  Jews  have  seemed 
to  be  so  devoid  of  it?  That  is  a  question  for 
the  historian  and  the  student  of  racial  psy¬ 
chology. 

The  training  of  this  mass  Polish  mind, 
therefore,  is  not  favourable  to  a  quick  under- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  145 

standing  of  and  enthusiasm  for  American 
principles.  Are  there  any  manifestations  of 
indifference  and  even  unfriendliness  in  the 
daily  life  of  the  Polish  Jews  in  New  York? 

The  first  fact  that  impresses  the  inquirer,  as 
he  attempts  to  glance  into  the  composite  mind 
of  metropolitan  Jewry,  is  its  reading  matter. 
The  thing  that  startles  is  that  the  Yiddish 
press  of  New  York  City  is  extremely  social¬ 
istic.  The  great  newspapers  edited  by  Jews, 
published  by  Jews,  and  read  by  Jews,  are 
preaching  political  principles  whose  success 
means  the  destruction  of  the  American  system 
of  government.  The  great  Yiddish  newspa¬ 
per  of  New  York’s  East  Eide,  is  Vorwdrts 
( The  Forward) ,  edited  by  Mr.  Abraham 
Cahan,  a  Russian  Jew  of  romantic  personal 
history  and  of  literary  attainments  of  a  high 
order — he  has  won  wide  recognition  as  a  short 
story  writer  in  English.  The  Forward  has  a 
daily  circulation  of  160,000  copies.  It  is  one 
of  the  most  successful  and  one  of  the  most 
profitable  newspapers  in  New  York  or  in  the 
United  States.  It  is  found  in  practically 
every  Yiddish  reading  home  and  wields  with 
its  clientele  an  influence  such  as  few  English 
papers  can  boast  with  theirs.  Its  political 


146  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

principles  are  not  found  in  the  platforms  of 
the  Republican  or  Democratic  parties,  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  or  in  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.  It  draws 
practically  no  inspiration  from  American 
history.  The  lives  of  Washington,  Franklin, 
Jefferson,  Lincoln,  and  the  other  American 
immortals  furnish  its  writers  no  examples. 
Its  principles  are  derived  from  Das  Kapital  of 
Karl  Marx.  The  wisdom  or  the  folly  of  So¬ 
cialism  are  not  the  issue  here.  The  only  point 
insisted  on  is  that  Socialism  is  not  American¬ 
ism  ;  it  may  be  better  or  worse ;  but  it  is  not  the 
same.  The  triumph  of  Marxism  means  the 
destruction  of  every  principle  upon  which  the 
American  state  rests,  and  it  makes  ridiculous 
a  century  and  a  half  of  American  history.  It 
substitutes  “internationalism”  for  a  robust 
American  nationalism,  “the  solidarity  of  the 
working  classes”  for  the  American  allegiance 
to  the  central  government,  “the  dictatorship 
of  the  proletariat”  for  representative  institu¬ 
tions. 

That  a  newspaper  should  exist  advocating 
these  doctrines  is  not  especially  significant; 
every  opinion,  in  politics  or  theology,  neces¬ 
sarily  has  its  spokesman  in  so  large  and 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  147 

diversified  a  country  as  the  United  States; 
what  is  significant  is  that  the  newspapers 
preaching  such  doctrines,  especially  The  For¬ 
ward ,  should  be  the  most  widely  read  of  all 
publications  on  the  East  Side.  That,  in  order 
to  obtain  a  large  circulation  with  the  Yiddish 
reading  public,  a  newspaper  should  be  obliged 
to  preach  the  same  principles  that  produced 
the  Bolshevist  Revolution  in  Russia  is  the 
thing  that  gives  one  pause.  Let  us  imagine, 
for  example,  that  the  New  York  Times ,  the 
Tribune ,  and  the  Evening  Post  were  con¬ 
stantly  advocating  the  overthrow  of  the 
American  Government  and  its  substitution 
by  a  Socialistic  state;  that  they  were  con¬ 
stantly  denouncing  American  “nationalism” 
and  praying  for  the  day  when  it  would  be 
superseded  by  international  “solidarity.” 
This  would  not  necessarily  mean  that  these 
newspapers  represented  a  perverted  men¬ 
tality,  for  any  man  is  free  to  believe  these 
doctrines  and  to  advocate  them  and  need  not 
be  regarded  as  an  abandoned  soul  because  he 
does  so.  Such  a  policy  would  merely  show 
that  these  journals,  hitherto  the  upholders  of 
American  constitutionalism,  had  given  up 
American  principles  and  that  they  hoped  for 


148  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

the  overthrow  of  the  American  Government. 
Moreover — and  this  is  the  point — it  would 
show  that  the  English  reading  masses  in  New 
York  City  regarded  Socialism  as  a  better 
political  system  than  the  American  Democ¬ 
racy.  This  one  fact,  therefore,  that  the  most 
influential  and  most  largely  circulated  Jewish 
press  of  New  York  is  devoted  to  Socialism, 
gives  us  that  insight  into  the  mass  mind  of 
the  Polish  Jew  which  is  essential  to  any 
adequate  comprehension  of  his  present  atti¬ 
tude  toward  the  American  state.  If  any  one 
of  the  big  English  papers  of  New  York  should 
advocate  such  political  principles,  they  would 
immediately  lose  their  readers  and  pass  out 
of  existence;  evidently  the  Yiddish  press  can 
keep  its  readers  only  by  taking  this  stand. 
To  those  who  still  believe  in  the  Constitution 
this  fact  is  really  appalling. 

This  enthusiasm  for  the  doctrines  of  Karl 
Marx,  in  preference  to  the  doctrines  of 
Washington  and  Jefferson  and  Franklin  and 
Lincoln  and  Roosevelt,  appears  in  other 
directions  than  in  the  daily  press.  Any  one 
who  attends  a  Socialistic  meeting  in  New 
York  is  immediately  impressed  by  the  fact  that 
the  audience  is  almost  exclusively  composed  of 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  149 

East  Side  Jews.  The  great  public  meeting 
place  established  by  Peter  Cooper  is  a  favour¬ 
ite  headquarters  for  East  Side  radicalism. 
Practically  all  the  orators  of  discontent  who 
occupy  soap  boxes  in  the  New  York  streets 
are  unmistakably  Eastern  Jews.  The  mass 
meetings  that  are  occasionally  called  in  the 
interest  of  American  recognition  of  the  Rus¬ 
sian  Soviet  Government  are  overwhelmingly 
Jewish  in  their  composition.  The  behaviour 
of  European  and  American  Socialists,  when 
face  to  face  with  the  European  War,  strik¬ 
ingly  brings  out  the  alien  quality  of  American 
radicalism.  Ever  since  the  days  of  Karl 
Marx  it  has  been  a  Socialist  tenet  that  all  wars 
are  the  products  of  capitalism;  from  this  it 
necessarily  follows  that  it  is  the  duty  of  all 
Socialists  in  all  countries  to  refuse  to  support 
their  governments  in  war.  This  had  been  a 
doctrine  of  the  First  Internationale,  but  it 
went  to  pieces  when  the  Franco-Prussian  War 
broke  out  in  1870.  The  Second  Internation¬ 
ale,  organized  on  the  ruins  of  the  First,  simi¬ 
larly  made  this  rule  of  non-participation  in 
nationalist  wars  one  of  the  fixed  stones  in  its 
edifice.  Again  the  existence  of  such  a  prin¬ 
ciple  did  not  affect  the  Socialists  of  Europe 


150  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

when  the  war  began  in  1914.  The  followers 
of  Marx  proved  that  their  devotion  to  this  idea 
was  merely  lip  service;  and  that  it  had  never 
seized  their  minds  and  their  consciences. 

The  repetition  of  a  pacifistic  phrase  could 
not  obliterate  many  centuries  of  history; 
though  the  Socialists  of  Germany,  France, 
Belgium,  and  England  had  for  years  accepted 
the  idea  of  the  “solidarity  of  the  working 
class”  in  preference  to  patriotism  on  national 
lines,  they  were  utterly  unable  to  forget,  when 
the  test  came,  that  they  were  first  of  all  Ger¬ 
mans,  Frenchmen,  Belgians,  and  Englishmen. 
In  all  these  countries,  therefore,  the  Socialists, 
as  a  party,  supported  their  countries  in  the 
war,  and  fought  in  their  armies;  despite  the 
doctrines  they  had  been  absorbing  for  years, 
they  became  as  effective  “nationalists”  as  the 
most  moss-grown  devotees  of  an  effete  patri¬ 
otism.  To  this  rule  of  Socialistic  behaviour 
there  was  one  great  exception.  There  was 
just  one  country  in  which  the  Socialists  re¬ 
mained  true  to  Socialistic  teaching  on  the  sub¬ 
ject  of  war.  There  was  one  country,  that  is, 
in  which  the  Socialists  refused  to  support  their 
government,  and  in  which  they  actually  took 
up  a  position  of  hostility.  That  country  was 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  151 

the  United  States.  The  test  of  conflict  dis¬ 
closed  that  American  Socialists  were  the  only 
kind  who  remained  faithful  to  their  Socialistic 
creed.  The  American  Congress  declared  war 
on  Germany  on  April  6,  1917;  the  very  next 
day  the  Socialist  party  of  America  met  in  con¬ 
gress  at  St.  Louis  and  adopted  a  manifesto 
calling  upon  its  followers  to  oppose  the  war. 
“The  Socialist  party  of  the  United  States  in 
the  present  grave  crisis,”  so  read  its  proclama¬ 
tion,  “solemnly  reaffirms  its  allegiance  to  the 
principle  of  internationalism  and  working- 
class  solidarity  the  world  over  and  proclaims 
its  unalterable  opposition  to  the  war  just  de¬ 
clared  by  the  Government  of  the  United  States. 
.  .  .  As  against  the  false  doctrine  of  na¬ 

tional  patriotism  we  uphold  the  ideal  of  inter¬ 
national  working-class  solidarity.”  That  the 
war  was  the  handiwork  of  the  capitalists,  that 
American  capitalists  had  forced  the  United 
States  in,  that  German  submarine  warfare  was 
not  an  invasion  of  American  rights  and  that, 
“in  modern  history  there  has  been  no  war  more 
unjustifiable  than  the  one  in  which  we  are 
about  to  engage” — such  were  only  a  few  of 
the  sentiments  contained  in  this  document. 
These  assembled  Socialists  pledged  themselves 


152  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

to  “continuous,  active,  and  public  opposition 
to  the  war  through  demonstrations,  mass  pe¬ 
titions,  and  all  other  means  in  our  power.” 
They  voted  to  oppose  “all  legislation  for  mili¬ 
tary  or  industrial  conscription,”  “any  attempt 
to  raise  money  for  payment  of  war  expenses 
by  taxing  the  necessaries  of  life  or  issuing 
bonds,”  to  organize  workers“into  strong, class¬ 
conscious,  and  closely  unified  political  and 
industrial  organizations,  to  enable  them  by 
concerted  and  harmonious  mass  action  to 
shorten  this  war  and  establish  lasting  peace.” 

Why  is  it  that  the  American  Socialists, 
unlike  the  Socialists  of  all  other  countries, 
thus  turned  upon  the  nation  whose  citizenship 
they  enjoyed?  The  answer  is  apparent. 
The  German  Socialists  were  Germans,  and 
possessed  the  instincts  and  the  emotions  of 
Germans;  the  French  Socialists  were  French¬ 
men;  the  Belgian  Socialists  were  Belgians, 
and  the  English  Socialists  were  Englishmen. 
But  Socialism  in  the  United  States  has  made 
little  impression  upon  native  Americans. 
With  the  exception  of  a  scattering  of  “intellec¬ 
tuals,”  American  Socialists  have  always  been 
aliens.  The  first  American  Socialists  were 
Germans,  but  they  were  few  in  number,  and 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  153 

are  not  especially  numerous  even  now.  The 
recent  influx  from  southern  Italy  has  added 
considerably  to  our  Socialist  population,  as 
have  the  miscellaneous  inroads  of  Slavic  races 
from  eastern  and  southeastern  Europe.  It 
does  not  appear  that  the  German  Jews  who 
came  in  considerable  numbers  in  the  ’forties, 
’fifties,  and  ’sixties  contained  any  considerable 
percentage  of  Socialists;  many  were  political 
revolutionaries,  but  revolutionaries  of  the  type 
of  Carl  Schurz;  their  enthusiasm  was  not  for 
the  Socialistic  state,  but  for  the  Republican 
form  of  government.  But  the  vast  inpouring 
of  the  Jews  from  eastern  Europe  presented 
an  entirely  different  aspect.  Not  all  were 
Socialists;  perhaps  the  majority,  in  their  diffi¬ 
cult  lives,  had  not  done  sufficient  thinking  on 
political  problems  to  take  a  decided  stand; 
yet  the  fact  cannot  be  overlooked  that  large 
numbers  of  them  had  been  Socialists  and  radi¬ 
cals  in  Russia  and  that  America,  whatever 
charm  it  may  have  had,  was  not  able  to  inspire 
them  with  any  great  fondness  for  its  political 
institutions.  Political  oppression  had  been 
their  lot  for  several  generations;  government 
meant  in  their  eyes  something  that  robbed  in 
the  name  of  taxation,  that  suppressed  speech 


154  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

and  press,  that  applied  the  lash  as  a  punitive 
measure,  that  exiled  to  Siberia,  that  deliber¬ 
ately  instigated  pogroms;  government  was 
thus  an  unlovely  and  a  hateful  thing.  This 
feeling  was  especially  poignant  among  the 
Jews  who  came  after  1905,  the  year  when  the 
autocracy  suppressed  the  revolution  in  such 
hideous  fashion. 

Thus  the  arrival  of  these  Polish  and  Rus¬ 
sian  Jews  introduced  a  new  element  into  the 
American  population.  For  the  first  time  the 
Socialists  became  powerful  enough  to  elect 
an  occasional  member  of  Congress  or  of  a 
state  legislature.  Even  with  these  accessions 
Socialist  voters  have  not  been  very  numerous; 
yet  the  fact  remains  that  the  only  considerable 
Socialistic  bloc  in  this  country  is  composed 
of  these  same  Eastern  Jews.  And  this,  of 
course,  is  the  reason  why  the  American 
Socialists  took  their  stand  against  the  war  in 
1917.  That  the  movement  was  almost  ex¬ 
clusively  alien  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that 
most  Socialists  of  “American  stock” — and 
there  were  a  few — broke  away  from  the 
party;  that  is,  they  behaved  precisely  like 
German  Socialists  in  Germany  and  French 
Socialists  in  France;  the  homeland  had  a 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  155 

stronger  hold  upon  them  than  they  had 
imagined;  when  the  time  came  to  make  the 
choice,  they  dropped  their  “internationalism” 
and  became  “Americans.”  The  exodus  in¬ 
cluded  such  members  as  Charles  E.  Russell, 
W.  E.  Walling,  John  Spargo  (English  born), 
J.  G.  Phelps  Stokes,  and  Allen  Benson.  The 
last,  who  had  been  the  Socialist  candidate  for 
President  in  1916,  publicly  explained  the 
cause  of  his  departure.  “The  present  foreign- 
born  leaders  of  the  Socialist  party,”  he  said, 
“if  they  had  lived  during  the  Civil  War, 
would  doubtless  have  censured  Marx  for  con¬ 
gratulating  Wilson  ...  I  therefore  re¬ 
sign  as  a  protest  against  the  foreign-born  lead¬ 
ership  that  blindly  believes  a  non-American 
policy  can  be  made  to  appeal  to  many  Amer¬ 
icans.”  The  line  of  schism  was  picturesquely 
emphasized  in  the  political  divergence  of  the 
Stokes  family.  Mr.  J.  G.  Phelps  Stokes,  a 
man  of  ancient  American  lineage,  had  for 
years  been  one  of  the  leaders  of  American 
Socialism ;  but  the  idea  of  abandoning  his  own 
country  and  championing  the  Kaiser,  and  this 
at  the  dictation  of  certain  recently  arrived  im¬ 
migrants  from  Russia,  was  too  much  for  his 
gorge,  and  he  promptly  left  the  party.  His 


156  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

wife,  however,  was  Miss  Rose  Pastor,  a  Rus¬ 
sian  Jewess;  she  remained  true  to  her  Social¬ 
ism,  committed  various  offences  against  Amer¬ 
ican  law,  and  was  indicted  under  the  sedition 
law. 

Yet  an  even  more  important  question  is 
this:  To  what  extent  did  the  Polish  Jews,  as 
a  mass,  endorse  the  programme  of  these 
leaders?  On  this  point  the  evidence  is  pretty- 
direct.  For  many  years  the  leader  of  Amer¬ 
ican  Socialism  has  been  Mr.  Morris  Hillquit 
of  New  York.  A  few  months  after  the  St. 
Louis  gathering  dispersed,  Mr.  Hillquit  be¬ 
came  the  candidate  for  Mayor  of  New  York 
on  the  Socialist  ticket.  Moreover,  he  made 
this  St.  Louis  declaration  the  leading  plank  in 
his  canvass.  He  boldly  took  the  issue  of 
“patriotism  the  great  sham,”  the  “solidarity  of 
the  working  classes,”  and  the  iniquity  of  the 
war  as  the  leading  motifs  of  his  speeches. 
This  gentleman  was  born  in  Riga,  Russia,  in 
1869 — his  name  is  said  to  have  been  originally 
Hillkovitz — and  lived  there  until  his  seven¬ 
teenth  year,  when  he  came  to  the  United  States 
as  an  immigrant.  His  new  country  has  ap¬ 
parently  done  well  for  him  in  a  material  way; 
he  has  prospered  as  a  lawyer;  one  of  the  jibes 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  157 

frequently  thrown  at  Mr.  Hillquit  during  the 
mayoralty  campaign  was  that  every  night, 
after  preaching  the  social  revolution  to  the 
hard-working  proletariat  on  the  East  Side,  he 
himself  returned  for  a  good  night’s  rest  to  his 
luxurious  apartment  on  Riverside  Drive. 
Mr.  Hillquit  has  little  respect  for  the  country 
which  has  given  him  these  opportunities.  For 
years  his  energies  have  been  devoted  to  de¬ 
stroying  the  American  system  of  government. 
For  the  present  Constitution  he  would  substi¬ 
tute  something  resembling  the  present  order 
in  Russia.  In  his  political  cosmos  there  is 
really  no  such  thing  as  an  American  citizen,  in 
whose  place  there  is  a  somewhat  amorphous 
figure,  a  member  of  an  international  brother¬ 
hood,  a  worker  who  finds  his  political  identity 
not  as  a  member  of  a  state,  but  as  one  of  the 
great  mass  of  toilers  in  all  parts  of  the  world. 
This  conception  is  written  into  the  very  Con¬ 
stitution  of  the  Socialist  party  of  America. 
To  belong  to  it,  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  an 
American  citizen;  aliens  are  as  freely  admit¬ 
ted  as  the  descendant  of  Plymouth  Rock;  and 
this  is  logical,  for  the  Socialist  party  denies 
that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  an  American ;  such 
a  creature  simply  does  not  exist;  all  that  does 


158  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

exist  is  “the  solidarity  of  the  working  class” 
in  all  countries,  to  whom  all  political  power, 
all  wealth,  and  the  enjoyment  thereof  are  re¬ 
served.  The  inspiration  of  the  Hillquit 
movement,  therefore,  was  anti-national  and 
anti-American. 

For  several  weeks  Mr.  Hillquit,  in  his 
mayoralty  campaign,  toured  the  tenement 
districts  of  New  York  City,  preaching  these 
doctrines  to  extremely  enthusiastic  audiences. 
At  that  time — it  was  the  autumn  of  1917 — the 
United  States  was  engaged  in  war  with  Ger¬ 
many.  Mr.  Hillquit  boldly  accepted  this 
challenge;  his  speeches  denounced  American 
participation,  practically  championed  the 
German  cause,  and  were  a  perpetual  incite¬ 
ment  to  his  hearers  to  obstruct  the  American 
effort.  Mr.  Hillquit  even  loudly  boasted  of 
the  fact  that  he  had  purchased  no  Liberty 
Bonds.  All  this  is  of  little  consequence  so  far 
as  Hillquit  himself  is  concerned;  for  years  his 
revolutionary  attitude  had  been  well  known; 
its  only  importance  in  the  present  connection 
is  the  light  which  it  sheds  upon  the  extent  to 
which  these  radical  teachings  are  part  and  par¬ 
cel  of  the  mass-mind  of  the  Polish  Jew.  These 
Jewish  sections  had  three  candidates  to  choose 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  159 

from  in  this  election:  the  radical  anti-nation¬ 
alist  Hillquit,  the  Tammany  Hall  Democrat 
John  F.  Hylan,  and  the  independent  John 
Purroy  Mitchel — the  last  the  most  effective 
and  chivalrous  figure  who  has  appeared  in 
New  York  local  politics  since  the  Civil  War. 
Whom  did  they  vote  for?  The  election  re¬ 
turns  tell  the  story.  The  assembly  districts 
in  which  the  Polish  Jews  are  most  numerous — 
the  ones  in  which  they  practically  amount  to 
the  entire  population — are  the  Fourth,  Sixth, 
Eighth,  and  Seventeenth  in  Manhattan,  and 
the  Third,  Fourth,  and  Fifth  in  the  Bronx. 
The  vote  in  these  districts  was  as  follows : 


Assembly  District 

Hylan 

Mitchel 

Hillquit 

Fourth . 

2,661 

328 

3,878 

Sixth . 

2,187 

831 

3,827 

Eighth  . 

2,715 

994 

4,847 

Seventeenth . 

2,622 

1,733 

4,78o 

Bronx — Third  .... 

3,301 

1,586 

4,865 

Fourth . 

3,016 

I,5i7 

4,967 

Fifth . 

3,313 

2,121 

5,864 

Total . 

I9,8i5 

9,110 

33,028 

These  figures  show  that  the  Jewish  voters 
did  not  vote  as  a  mass  for  this  anti-American 
candidate.  Their  support  in  these  and  in 
other  districts  in  which  the  Polish  Jews  are 
exceedingly  numerous  was  thrown  in  a  con- 


160  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

siderable  degree  to  Tammany  Hall.  Yet  the 
Socialist  candidate,  even  in  face  of  the  very 
seditious  campaign  he  had  made,  did  prove 
the  favourite  in  these  densely  populated 
Polish  districts.  Though  there  were  consid¬ 
erable  minorities  who  went  to  the  other  candi¬ 
dates,  the  fact  remains  that  more  of  them  voted 
for  Socialism  than  for  any  other  cause.  They 
prove  that  the  only  sections  of  New  York 
City  which  contain  a  large  Socialistic  popu¬ 
lation  are  those  in  which  the  Polish  Jew  is  the 
predominant  element.  The  local  election  re¬ 
turns  for  fifteen  years  demonstrate  the  same 
fact.  Whenever  a  Socialist  is  sent  as  a  con¬ 
gressman  to  Washington,  an  assemblyman  to 
Albany,  or  an  alderman  to  the  City  Hall,  he 
always  represents  a  district  in  which  the  popu¬ 
lation  is  almost  exclusively  composed  of  Pol¬ 
ish  Jews. 

In  their  labour  organizations  the  immi¬ 
grants  from  Poland  and  Russia  show  precisely 
the  same  tendencies.  Up  to  about  the  year 
1914  the  labour  movement  in  America  had 
presented  one  sharp  angle  of  contrast  with  the 
labour  movement  in  Europe  and  even  in  Eng¬ 
land.  It  had  been  kept  separate  and  distinct 
from  programmes  that  were  destructive  of  the 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  161 

existing  political  order.  The  labour  move¬ 
ment  had  been  American  in  its  purposes  and 
its  methods.  The  old  Knights  of  Labour  and 
the  existing  Federation  of  Labour  had  aimed 
only  at  improving  the  conditions  of  the  work¬ 
ing  classes,  to  give  them  better  wages,  better 
working  conditions,  better  opportunities  at 
life.  That  these  organizations  had  frequently 
indulged  in  acts  of  lawlessness  is  true;  but  the 
destruction  of  the  present  political  and 
economic  system  had  never  been  their  am¬ 
bition,  and  the  teachings  of  Karl  Marx  had 
never  obtained  any  hold  on  any  large  number 
of  American  workingmen.  They  had  always 
accepted  the  American  Constitution  as  their 
political  ideal  and  such  changes  as  they  sought 
to  bring  about  in  the  industrial  system  were 
always  planned  to  be  accomplished  within 
the  operations  of  that  instrument.  One  of  the 
facts  that  had  astonished  foreign  observers 
was  the  extent  to  which  the  American  labour 
movement  had  been  kept  free  from  politics. 
Many  parties  had  been  launched  adorned  with 
the  labour  label;  many  attempts  had  been 
made  to  organize  American  workmen  in  a 
political  unit  for  political  action,  but  they 
had  always  failed.  American  workmen,  like 


1 62  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

American  millionaires,  became  Democrats  or 
Republicans;  politics,  at  least  in  its  form  of 
organization,  recognized  no  social  distinc¬ 
tions;  the  American  “proletariat”  was  signally 
insensible  to  the  attempts  of  alien  agitators  to 
stimulate  its  “class  consciousness.”  No  other 
country  presented  any  phenomenon  quite  like 
this.  At  the  present  time  the  British  Labour 
party,  with  its  130  members,  is  the  second 
party  in  the  British  Parliament;  but  there  is 
not  in  the  American  Congress  a  single  member 
who  sits  there  as  the  representative  of  a  labour 
political  organization. 

Mr.  Gompers’s  career  as  President  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labour,  largely  rep¬ 
resents  a  determination  to  keep  the  American 
labour  movement  free  from  Socialism,  anar¬ 
chism,  or  political  radicalism  of  any  type. 
Mr.  Gompers  believes  in  the  American  Con¬ 
stitution,  in  the  American  system  of  govern¬ 
ment,  and  he  has  no  patience  or  sympathy  with 
any  attempt  to  destroy  them.  He  believes 
that  he  can  secure  his  reforms  under  that  Con¬ 
stitution  and  he  is  prepared  to  fight  his  battle 
on  that  line.  Many  times  have  the  radical 
forces  in  the  labour  ranks  tried  to  unseat  him, 
but  up  to  the  present  time  they  have  inglori- 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  163 

ously  failed.  Mr.  Gompers  is  himself  a  Jew, 
and  in  his  own  person  sufficiently  refutes  the 
mistaken  Belloc  dictum  that  no  Jew  can  be  a 
sincere  nationalist;  the  fact  remains,  however, 
that  the  chief  opposition  he  has  met  in  his  at¬ 
tempt  to  keep  American  labour  free  from 
radicalism  has  come  from  Jews — almost  ex¬ 
clusively  of  the  Polish  or  Russian  type.  Up 
to  1914  the  working  classes  in  the  clothing 
trades  had  never  been  very  closely  organ¬ 
ized.  The  unions  had  existed  for  years  and 
had  engaged  in  many  fierce  strikes,  but  that 
lack  of  cohesion  which  is  one  of  the  failings  of 
Jewish  mentality  had  caused  the  members  to 
hold  their  allegiance  lightly  and  to  become 
backward  in  paying  dues.  The  great  labour 
group  in  the  clothing  trades  was  the  United 
Garment  Workers  of  America,  a  union  whose 
form  of  organization  followed  the  accepted 
American  standard.  It  was  a  union,  that  is, 
on  simple  craft  lines;  it  existed  to  improve  the 
general  economic  conditions  of  the  workers; 
it  proclaimed  no  political  purpose,  and  cer¬ 
tainly  cherished  no  Socialistic  or  subversive 
programme.  As  such  the  United  Garment 
Workers  of  America  was  affiliated  with  the 
American  Federation  of  Labour  and  partici- 


1 64  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

pated  in  all  its  conventions.  It  had  accom¬ 
plished  many  beneficial  reforms,  especially  in 
the  abolition  of  the  sweatshop  and  improved 
working  conditions. 

Its  membership,  naturally,  was  overwhelm- 
ingly  Jewish,  though  there  was  then,  as  there 
is  to-day,  a  considerable  representation  of 
Italian  workers.  For  years  the  forces  of  radi¬ 
calism  had  been  seeking  to  capture  the  gar¬ 
ment  workers ;  in  the  year  1914  these  elements, 
under  the  leadership  of  Sidney  Hillman,  one 
of  the  most  revolutionary  labour  captains  in 
New  York,  succeeded  so  far  as  to  elect  a  group 
of  radical  delegates  to  the  convention  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labour.  Mr. 
Gompers’s  convention  refused  to  admit  these 
gentlemen  because  their  announced  pro¬ 
gramme  was  revolutionary  and  un-American. 
The  Hillman  cohorts  therefore  withdrew 
from  the  hall,  started  a  rump  convention  in 
another  building,  and  organized  a  new  union 
called  the  Amalgamated  Clothing  Workers  of 
America.  The  purpose  of  the  new  group  was 
not  disguised.  It  was  blatantly  radical.  Its 
aim  was  to  organize  the  clothing  workers  for 
political  action;  and  it  proposed  to  use  the 
men  of  the  clothing  trades  as  a  voting  unit  to 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  165 

destroy  the  present  system  of  government  as 
well  as  the  present  economic  order  and  to 
plant  in  their  place  a  condition  not  unlike  that 
which  prevails  in  Russia.  Its  constitution  is 
full  of  the  now  familiar  talk  about  “class  con¬ 
sciousness,”  “capitalism,”  the  “ruling  class,” 
the  “ruled  class,”  “the  constant  and  unceas¬ 
ing  struggle,”  “craft  unionism,”  and  the  like. 
Its  whole  purpose  is  summed  up  in  this  sec¬ 
tion  :  “The  industrial  and  inter-industrial 
organization,  built  upon  the  solid  rock  of  clear 
knowledge  and  class  consciousness,  will  put 
the  organized  working  class  in  actual  con¬ 
trol  of  the  system  of  production  and  the 
working  class  will  then  be  ready  to  take  pos¬ 
session  of  it.”  That  is,  the  plan  is  for  the  one 
big  union— the  organization  of  all  the  work¬ 
ers,  not  on  craft  lines,  but  on  class  lines — this 
as  the  preparation  for  the  day  when  the  work¬ 
ers  will  themselves  take  possession  of  industry. 
The  programme  is  thus  that  of  the  Soviet. 

Again  and  again  the  leaders  of  the  Amalga¬ 
mated  have  proclaimed  this  purpose.  “We 
are  going  to  move  heaven  and  earth,”  shouted 
Abraham  J.  Shiplacoff,  manager  of  the  Jewish 
Board  of  Clothing  Workers,  in  a  public 
speech,  “to  educate  our  people  that  they  and 


1 66  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

they  alone  are  the  owners  of  the  industry,  and 
not  the  idlers  and  loafers  at  our  backs.  The 
workers  in  Russia  have  found  this  out,  God 
bless  them!  .  .  .  Everybody  knows  it  is 

war.  We  are  going  to  control  the  industry.” 
And  again  this  same  speaker:  “If  I  knew  that 
old  Sammy  Gompers  knew  as  much  as  that,  I 
would  tell  you  to  go  and  do  what  the  workers 
did  in  Turin.  Ten  thousand  of  them  marched 
to  the  factory  with  music  and  a  flag,  and  they 
opened  the  doors  and  went  to  work  and  said : 
‘To  hell  with  the  owners  of  the  factory!’  ” 
The  Secretary  of  the  Amalgamated  is  Joseph 
Schlossberg,  who,  in  a  speech  at  Madison 
Square  Garden,  announced  its  programme  in 
these  words:  “The  clothing  industry  is  ours. 
We  are  not  going  to  permit  the  employer  to 
determine  where  his  factory  shall  be  or  how 
many  hours  we  shall  work.  .  .  .  The 

flame  of  rebellion  is  blowing  fiercer  every 
day  in  the  hearts  of  all  the  men  in  the  clothing 
industry.”  The  attitude  of  the  Amalgamated 
toward  the  American  Government  was  suf¬ 
ficiently  indicated  by  a  banner  borne  in 
the  streets  of  Boston  during  one  of  their 
strikes,  with  the  following  legend:  “To  hell 
with  the  United  States.”  The  opinion  of  an 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  167 

American  union  leader  of  the  old  type,  Mr. 
John  P.  Holland,  President  of  the  New  York 
State  Federation  of  Labour,  may  also  be 
quoted.  “The  Amalgamated  Clothing  Work¬ 
ers,”  he  says,  “do  not  believe  in  the  Govern¬ 
ment.  There  is  not  a  place  where  one  of  their 
speakers  goes  that  he  does  not  ridicule  the 
form  of  government  of.  the  United  States. 
Only  a  few  weeks  ago  one  of  their  speakers 
was  in  Buffalo,  and  at  McKinley  Square 
spoke,  ridiculing  the  Government  and  the 
method  of  doing  business.” 

Again,  this  movement  would  have  no  racial 
bearing  if  it  was  an  isolated  thing,  unrelated 
to  the  daily  lives  of  the  masses  that  make  up 
the  great  Jewish  districts.  Again,  the  impor¬ 
tant  point  is,  do  the  rank  and  file  endorse  this 
radical  union?  Again  the  facts  are  available. 
Since  the  break  took  place  in  1914,  a  fierce 
battle  has  been  fought  between  the  United 
Garment  Workers,  the  conservative  union, 
and  the  Amalgamated,  the  radical,  for  the 
control  of  the  clothing  industry.  The  cloth¬ 
ing  workers  have  abandoned,  almost  in  mass, 
their  conservative  leaders  and  have  gone  over 
to  the  spokesmen  of  sedition  and  revolution. 
The  old  United  Garment  Workers  is  still 


1 68  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

affiliated  with  the  American  Federation  of 
Labour,  but  it  is  a  feeble  concern.  Its  mem¬ 
bership  is  about  30,000  while  the  membership 
of  the  radical  organization  is  about  175,000. 
It  is  extremely  significant  that  the  first  labour 
movement  in  America  to  become  Socialistic 
and  anti-Government  in  its  purposes  should 
derive  its  membership  from  immigrants  from 
eastern  Europe.  The  radical  writers  rejoice 
in  this  fact.  “No  strong  and  important  group 
of  unions  in  the  United  States,”  says  George 
Soule,  in  a  recent  book,  “has  wholeheartedly 
accepted  the  new  unionism  and  consciously 
modelled  structure  and  strategy  accordingly, 
except  the  unions  in  the  clothing  industry.” 
The  phenomenon  is  something  entirely  new  in 
American  life. 

That  there  is  a  great  mass  of  radicalism 
among  the  Polish  Jews  is  thus  apparent;  to 
deny  it  or  attempt  to  explain  it  away  would 
help  us  little  in  the  discussion  of  the  immi¬ 
gration  problem.  Yet  it  is  necessary  also  to 
be  entirely  just.  The  study  of  the  Jewish 
character  involves  one  in  a  maze  of  contra¬ 
dictions.  That  the  Jew  should  be  a  Socialist 
at  all  is  a  startling  fact.  The  main  charge 
brought  against  him  is  his  alleged  materialism, 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  169 

his  acquisitiveness,  his  passion  for  property, 
his  insistence  on  the  personal  possession  of  the 
thing  that  he  can  call  his  own.  An  economic 
system  that  contemplates  the  abolition  of  pri¬ 
vate  property  and  the  common  possession  of 
the  fruits  of  industry  would  seem  to  be  the  last 
one  that  would  appeal  to  him.  Why  should 
a  race  so  devoted  to  building  up  property  also 
be  so  eager  to  pull  it  down?  And  in  his  atti¬ 
tude  toward  the  American  Government  the 
Polish  Jew  shows  a  similar  contradiction. 
His  newspaper  reading  is  Socialistic,  he  votes 
for  candidates  whose  canvass  is  based  on  vio¬ 
lent  hostility  to  the  American  Government, 
and  his  labour  unions,  alone  of  all  American 
labour  unions,  seek  to  establish  a  Soviet  system 
in  place  of  the  one  established  by  Washington 
and  Franklin. 

Yet  it  must  also  be  recorded  that  Liberty 
Bonds  were  sold  in  large  quantities  on  the  East 
Side  during  the  war,  and  that  the  Jewish  sol¬ 
diers,  especially  those  in  the  New  York  Sev¬ 
enty-Seventh  Division,  fought  bravely  and 
effectively.  It  would  be  exceedingly  unkind 
and  unfair  in  any  attempt  to  appraise  their 
qualities  as  citizens  not  to  make  a  record  of  this 
fact.  Yet  the  one  clear  conclusion  is  that  the 


170  THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA 

process  of  “Americanization”  is  going  to  be 
slow  and  more  difficult  with  this  class  of  im¬ 
migrants  than  with  any  other,  except  perhaps 
the  Southern  Italians.  The  million  and 
a  half  Jews — probably  more — that  have 
crowded  into  the  New  York  tenements  are  by 
no  means  digested.  This  does  not  mean  that 
they  never  will  be.  The  completeness  with 
which  the  Sephardic  and  German  Jews  have 
been  absorbed  into  the  national  life,  the  high 
standard  of  patriotic  citizenship  they  have 
evinced,  and  the  services  they  have  rendered  in 
education,  science,  letters,  and  other  activities, 
show  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  Jewish  nature 
that  necessarily  dooms  him  to  be  forever  an 
alien.  But  the  task  with  the  Polish  Jew  is 
going  to  be  a  longer  and  more  difficult  one. 
That  there  are  hundreds  of  thousands  in  New 
York’s  Polish  Jew  population  who  do  not 
align  themselves  with  these  radical  move¬ 
ments,  and  to  whom  American  history  and 
American  institutions  mean  much,  is  clear. 
The  unpleasant  fact,  however,  is  that  there  is 
an  uncomfortable  remainder  who  do.  An 
actual  count  in  the  clothing  workers  of  Amer¬ 
ica  shows  175,000  radicals  against  30,000  con¬ 
servatives.  In  its  present  great  Polish  Jew 


THE  JEWS  IN  AMERICA  171 

population — in  its  work  of  assimilating  them, 
of  making  them  sturdy  and  loyal  fellow  citi¬ 
zens  of  the  Republic — the  Nation  already  has 
a  considerable  job  cut  out  for  it.  Until  this 
mass  is  brought  into  harmony  with  American 
traditions  and  American  instincts  it  would  cer¬ 
tainly  be  folly  to  add  considerably  to  it.  To 
do  so  would  be  unfair,  above  all,  to  the  Jews 
already  here.  There  is  only  one  way  in  which 
the  United  States  can  be  protected  from  the 
anti-Semitism  which  so  grievously  afflicts  the 
eastern  sections  of  Europe.  That  is  by  put¬ 
ting  up  the  bars  against  these  immigrants  until 
the  day  comes  when  those  already  here  are  ab¬ 
sorbed.  This  country  already  has  too  many 
racial  and  social  problems  and  too  many  tasks 
of  economic  regeneration  to  add  unnecessarily 
to  them.  Happily  this  conviction  has  at  last 
become  a  fixed  one  in  the  popular  mind. 
There  is  no  more  hopeful  manifestation  in 
American  life  to-day  than  the  fact  that  the 
Nation,  after  fifty  years  of  fumbling  and  dis¬ 
cussing,  has  at  last  reached  the  point  of  wis¬ 
dom  in  the  restriction  of  immigration. 


THE  END 


Date  Due 

4 

PRINTED 

IN  U.  S.  A. 

